Alejandro Amenábar makes a frightening ghost story from a dark house, a strained mother and the time spent waiting. Nicole Kidman gives it weight, though the deliberate pace will test anyone impatient for a scare.
The Others is frightening enough to justify most of the time it spends keeping us waiting. Alejandro Amenábar, who writes and directs, makes a controlled, unsettling ghost story that occasionally waits longer than it needs to. Its strongest resource is Nicole Kidman, playing Grace Stewart as a mother whose efforts to remain composed are visibly costing her. We recommend it, with the warning that its quiet stretches demand some willingness to sit still.
Kidman lets Grace’s severity and vulnerability occupy the same face, so that her attempts to manage the household never make her seem secure in it. Alakina Mann and James Bentley, as Anne and Nicholas, give the children an unsettling presence without reducing them to little instruments for delivering scares. Their mother commands our attention, but they make us question how much reassurance her authority can offer. The performances keep the family’s unease credible even when the plotting is conspicuously careful.
Javier Aguirresarobe’s cinematography finds menace in shadow and mist without making the image difficult to read. Darkness matters because we keep searching it for something that might not be there. Benjamín Fernández’s production design makes the house feel oppressively enclosed, somewhere a family could come to forget that other places exist. Between those interiors and the mist outside, there seems little prospect of finding somewhere comfortable to sit.
We were frightened by the ordinary disturbances in the house, because the sound makes us listen for a presence the picture does not confirm. There is something particularly uncomfortable about having time to decide that we have heard enough, then having to keep listening. Amenábar allows that discomfort to grow, trusting us to supply something horrible without needing to put it plainly on screen. The lack of graphic violence leaves our attention free to settle on those small interruptions.
Nacho Ruiz Capillas’s editing gives these stretches enough room, though the measured pace sometimes becomes a drag. There are passages when the next disturbance takes too long to arrive, and our attention wanders from the house to the pacing. Amenábar also composed the music, which helps sustain the unease without being as memorable as the use of sound and silence. A little more variation in the rhythm would have helped, especially when the atmosphere is already so firmly established.
As gothic horror, this works within familiar conventions and does not strain to escape them. That can make it feel stiff, particularly when the deliberate pace leaves us noticing how carefully the scares have been prepared. Yet Grace’s distress gives the house a reason to be frightening beyond its suitability for a ghost story, and Kidman never lets her become merely a woman waiting for the next disturbance. Amenábar’s writing is careful about what it tells us, and the performers prevent that care from becoming an exercise in arranging clues.
The 101-minute running time helps, despite those slower stretches. This is a good choice for anyone interested in horror but weary of graphic violence. Choose an evening when both people on the sofa are prepared to keep quiet.
