AmateurMovieReviews.com

By Simon Woodhouse

Is horrifying the same as scary? In celluloid terms I'd say no. To horrify an audience you just need to show them something horrific (duh!), and that can simply be a guy with an axe hacking someone's head off. The chopping noises, the blood spraying, the victim screaming - it's all horrific. But is it scary? If you can relate to it, then yes it might be. However, not many of us have been in a position where someone wants to cut our head off with an axe. On the other hand, the shiver up the spine, the feeling of being watched, the thought there's something lurking in the shadows, most people can relate to that. To horrify an audience requires little imagination. At the very least all you need is one maniac, one axe and one victim. To scare them, to induce the shiver up the spine, to capture the threat in the shadows, that's a lot more difficult.

Number-wise, horror films out rank scary films by a mile. It seems as though for every one genuinely scary movie there are at least a hundred teen slasher flicks. I guess this is why truly frightening films carve out such a niche for themselves. The Others certainly has a niche. It's one of those very rare, authentically creepy movies that revolve around a very simple premise.

Grace Stewart (Nichole Kidman) lives with her two children, Anne (Alakina Mann) and Nicholas (James Bentely), in a large house on the island of Jersey. As it's the closing days of World War II, the Nazis have only just left, retreating back to the French mainland. Grace's husband is an officer in the British army, so he's over in France helping the Allies drive Hitler's men back into Germany. This means Grace is left to look after the children herself, not an easy task when they both suffer from an allergic reaction to sunlight. Exposure to such a bright light can result in death for either child. As a result of this aliment, Grace is forced to keep the house in a constant state of near darkness, each window covered with heavy curtains and each door locked to stop the children accidentally wandering into the light.

Nearly at her wits ends as the result of the previous housekeeping staff suddenly upping and leaving, Grace is saved from total isolation (she can't go out and leave the children) by the arrival of Mrs Mills (Fionnula Flannagan), Mr Tuttle (Eric Sykes) and Lydia (Elaine Cassidy), a team of house keeping staff who she assumes have arrived in answer to her advert in the local newspaper. But even with their help things aren't easy. The daughter Anne is at an age where she constantly questions her mother, driving Grace to the point of distraction. What's more, the two children claim there's someone else living in the house with them. Anne draws a picture of the ghostly family, rendering a particularly creepy likeness of the grandmother.

Set against this background, Grace starts to experience odd happenings - noises in apparently empty rooms, a piano that plays itself, doors opening and closing on their own. Though this all sounds like standard haunted house goings-on, the reality of these occurrences are brought home by Nichole Kidman's brilliant portrayal of a woman on the edge. Released in 2001, The Others hit cinemas in the same year as Moulin Rouge, another film that starred Kidman. She earned an Oscar nomination for her role in the latter, but ultimately the statue went to Halle Berry for her performance in Monster's Ball. However, had Kidman been nominated for The Others instead of Moulin Rouge, I'm sure she would have been the one clutching Oscar on the night, and not Berry. But no matter who the award went to and why, nothing can lessen Kidman's acting prowess in this film, surely her best performance to date.

Even though she dominates the proceedings, the movie could have fallen over had the two children involved not been up to the task. Though at times they're both a bit irritating - Anne is too precocious and Nicholas too weepy, their reactions do make some of the scary moments even scarier. The frights in this movie come in a variety of ways, but there isn't a drop of blood to be seen during the whole one hundred minutes. What you do get are scenes where your imagination has to fill in the blanks, something that is always more frightening than in your face shocks. When Grace enters a room full of furniture covered with dustsheets, every silhouette looks like a ghost. When she hears the piano playing and goes to investigate, you'll be begging her not to open the door. And as for the scene where Anne is wearing the pretty white dress, well, you'll never forget that one. All these frights lead rapidly up to a finale that'll have you on the edge of your seat. But there's also a twist, a clever reversal that'll suddenly make sense of the movie's creepier moments.

Besides Kidman and the two child stars, Fionnula Flannagan turns in a fine performance as the housekeeper Mrs Mills. She's the opposite of Kidman's character - cool, calm and never flustered. But this peaceful demeanour also has a slightly sinister edge, something that comes out more and more as the film goes on.

A slow-burner at the box office, The Others crept into cinemas with little fanfare. Word of mouth, however, ensured it reached the widest possible audience and turned a more than healthy profit. As I mentioned earlier, if it hadn't been released in the same year as Moulin Rouge, I'm sure it would have won a host of awards. That it didn't doesn't detract from its greatness, and it's not too much of an exaggeration to say it's one of the scariest movies ever made.