The Others (2001)

Though it features almost no jump scares or hideous figures, this film sends a chill down your spine the whole way through. An isolated mansion trapped in fog, curtains always drawn, the strange rule that one room must be locked before another is opened. Director Alejandro Amenábar conjures terror with stillness, darkness, and the characters’ unease alone, in place of loud devices. And in the end, the moment everything is overturned, it offers the experience of every scene you saw before arriving with an entirely different meaning.

What it’s about — An intruder in a mansion afraid of light

Just after the Second World War, Grace (Nicole Kidman) lives with her two children in a mansion on an isolated British island. Her husband, who went off to war, has not returned, and she governs the household with a devout, strict manner. Her two children suffer from a rare illness that forbids them from being exposed to sunlight, so all the curtains in the house are always drawn, and every door must be locked when moving between rooms. One day three new servants arrive, and from that point on inexplicable things begin to happen in the house. Footsteps are heard in empty rooms, and a child says there are other people inside the house. Grace strives to uncover the intruders’ identity, but the truth lies somewhere entirely unlike what she expects.

Direction — Unease built from light, darkness, and silence

This film’s greatest power lies in restraint. Amenábar barely uses the sensational scenes horror films so often lean on. Instead he builds tension with his command of light and darkness. The dark frame, with curtains always drawn and only lamplight to rely on, conveys to the audience the very state of characters who cannot see an inch ahead. As unseen threats fill the screen, footsteps heard in the dark, a presence beyond a locked door, the unease of not knowing what will appear carries through to the end.

The director uses music and sound very carefully as well. Rather than laying on unnecessary music to force emotion, he draws out silence at length to magnify the weight of stillness. The tension thus accumulated bit by bit bursts all at once in the final twist, and this twist is not merely a device to startle the audience but the core that rewrites the meaning of the entire film. Watch it again knowing the ending, and you realize how intricately the hidden clues were placed in the earlier scenes.

Performance — Kidman’s Grace, crumbling beneath discipline

Nicole Kidman is the pillar that holds up this film. The Grace she plays is a figure who binds herself tightly with faith and discipline, cold and resolute on the surface yet with deep unease and sorrow flowing beneath. Kidman delicately renders this complex interior through restrained expressions and a trembling voice. Following her gradual unraveling, you come to realize anew, at the moment the final truth is revealed, how precisely calculated that performance was.

The young actors playing the two children are impressive too. The performance of the bold yet somehow uneasy elder daughter in particular is a key axis driving the film’s mystery. Fionnula Flanagan, as the newly arrived servant, with her calm yet secret-laden air, thickens the strange atmosphere that hangs over the mansion all the more.

What the film says — A truth not accepted, and its desolation

This work is, in the end, a story about a truth that was not accepted. The discipline and darkness Grace so clung to are also a veil to conceal a reality she does not wish to face. The harder she strives not to see something, the closer the truth draws, and only at the moment she finally acknowledges it does peace arrive. Though it wears the skin of a horror film, inside it carries a weighty emotion about the process of accepting loss. And so this film’s ending is less frightening than somehow desolate and tender.

Ratings & reception

This film’s IMDb rating is 7.6, its Rotten Tomatoes freshness is 84 percent, and its Metacritic score is 74 out of 100. The direction that builds horror from atmosphere alone, Nicole Kidman’s performance, and the well-crafted twist won broad praise. As a work that showed how frightening a film can be without sensational scenes, it is never left out when atmosphere-driven horror is discussed. Long after its release, thanks to its completeness, it remains a film many return to again and again.

Verdict

If you expect loud horror, it may not line up with your hopes. But if you want slowly tightening unease and the thrill of a twist that overturns everything at the end, works like this are rare. It has the depth to become a different film when you watch it again knowing the ending. To the completeness woven from restrained direction, Kidman’s superb performance, and intricate construction, I give ★4.0.

Recommended for

• Viewers who love horror that frightens through atmosphere without sensational scenes
• Those who enjoy mysteries with a powerful final twist
• Anyone who wants to see Nicole Kidman’s delicate performance