The Others

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The Others begins with a horrific scream, as Grace (Nicole Kidman), the camera uncomfortably close on her face, awakens from a nightmare. She gasps for breath, then composes herself. Fervently Catholic and genteelly stoic, Grace is experiencing a crisis in her previously cast-iron faith. During the last days of World War II, she’s living in a huge mansion on the dreary Isle of Jersey, a place picked out by her husband Charles (Christopher Eccleston), who subsequently took off for the front. Though she received word of his death, Grace holds out hope that he will return, partly in reaction to the dire turns her life has suddenly taken: Not only have her servants mysteriously "vanished into thin air," but a strange malady has made her children suddenly deathly allergic to sunlight. She must keep the curtains drawn at all times, and to ensure that no crack of light will slip in accidentally, she locks every door behind her before she moves on to another room.

It’s no surprise that the kids — Anne (Alakina Mann) and Nicholas (James Bentley) — are looking pasty, even cadaverous. Still, they hardly alarm the new crew of servants who arrive unexpectedly to apply for the newly vacant positions. Stern housekeeper Mrs. Mills (Fionnula Flanagan), literally mute maid Lydia (Elaine Cassidy) and crinkly yard man Mr. Tuttle (Eric Sykes) arrive as if on cue, reassuring Grace that they will soon have the dead branches and dusty attic rooms cleaned up.

Written, directed and scored by the young Spanish filmmaker Alejandro Amenábar, The Others explores Grace’s acute self-doubts as she struggles to maintain her household and her sanity. Indeed, the house — a foreboding, massive and creaky structure — is an apt metaphor for Grace’s changing sense of herself. While she feels trapped within and by it, she also feels connected to it, unable to leave, partly because her children are confined, but partly because she’s so used to her solitude that she’s questioning her understanding of the outside world. This concentrated focus on Grace’s internal struggle means that Kidman is onscreen during much of the film, and she makes an exemplary neo-gothic heroine, her face drained of color and her posture achingly proper, perhaps especially when some scary unseen thing is coming up behind her.

Anne and Nicholas serve mostly as extensions of Grace’s troubled psyche. In an effort to please their mother and avoid the effects of her migraine headaches, they work hard at their lessons, memorize Bible passages and stay as quiet as possible. They’re eerily serene as they whisper to one another about mummy’s recent "breakdown" (to which they allude in only the vaguest terms), or fret about the "intruders" who come to their bedroom at night. In particular, Anne describes and then sketches a boy named Viktor, whom no one else can see. She insists on creeping out her brother by detailing the differences between ghosts who "wear sheets and rattle chains" and those who are less aggressive, like Viktor.

But while Grace is devoted to her kids, she’s also brittle, distant and anxious around them, a tension exacerbated by her awareness of the presence of Mrs. Mills and company. The housekeeper in particular starts to seem like an intruder to Grace, hovering in the hallways, quietly observing and judging her. Despite her attempts to enlist the servants’ help in maintaining some semblance of order in the house, Grace can’t help but imagine that they can perceive her own crumbling sense of control. She’s feeling like a stranger in her own home.

There’s good reason for her feeling this way, as far as we can see. Or maybe more accurately, as far as we can’t. Given the premise that the house must remain dark at all times, The Others has a built-in spookiness, which it deploys to great effect. As Grace walks from room to room, her sensible shoes clacking on the hardwood floors, the camera follows or anticipates where she’s headed, but can never show explicitly what’s around her. Amenábar’s elegant score — mostly comprised of stark, single notes — raises the emotional ante while making your imagination do most of the work.

And this gets at the film’s most effectively haunting theme, the sense that "others" are not only external threats, but also coming from within. Though Grace is intent on "closing the curtains," she can’t keep the light out (so, yes, the overriding metaphor is a little obvious). But while The Others is being compared to The Sixth Sense, its manipulations are much less annoying. As in his previous Open Your Eyes, Amenábar shifts times and locations, fragmenting the narrative, pressing for your participation in its development. In The Others, you are aided in this complicated business by Kidman’s extraordinarily precise performance. As Grace forces herself to investigate her own home, discovering its history as well as her own suppressed memories, she also comes to understand her beliefs and her relationships. For the most part, it’s a harrowing journey.