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Young Spanish writer-director Alejandro Amenábar, whose art house hit Open Your Eyes was remade Stateside as Vanilla Sky, makes the cultural crossover to Hollywood with The Others, a chillingly fresh haunted house movie. Nicole Kidman stars as Grace, an upper-class British woman who attempts to keep a tight grasp on life in the cavernous mansion she shares with her sheltered, photosensitive children, Anne (Alakina Mann) and Nicholas (James Bentley). The arrival of new, unannounced servants (Fionnula Flanagan, Eric Sykes, and Elaine Cassidy) coincides with increasing weirdness in the house, including voices and noises that wear the badge of a good old-fashioned haunting, it would seem. Kidman anchors the film, inviting sympathy even as her hysteria worsens. Her Golden Globe-nominated performance is rivaled by those of the child actors, whose charm -- and evident dread -- lingers after the last reel. The film has plenty of scares to it, and Amenábar doles them out masterfully. Plot and character build-up lead to continually mounting shocks that climax in the best horror genre twist since The Sixth Sense. The two-DVD set includes a 30-minute behind-the-scenes documentary and various featurettes. Tony Nigro

All Movie Guide

Spanish filmmaker Alejandro Amenabar's first English-language production is a creepy period ghost story that continues in the vein of his earlier art house hit Open Your Eyes (1997). Nicole Kidman stars as Grace, a devoutly religious mother of two ailing children who has moved with her family to a mansion on the English coast while awaiting her husband's return from World War II, though he has been declared missing. Their children, Anne (Alakina Mann) and Nicholas (James Bentley), both suffer from a rare photosensitivity disease that renders them extremely vulnerable to sunlight, prompting Grace's rule of having only one door open in the house at a time. When Anne begins claiming to see ghosts, Grace at first believes her newly arrived family of eccentric servants to be responsible, but chilling events and visions soon lead her to believe that something supernatural is indeed going on. The Others was released only a few months prior to Vanilla Sky (2001), the American remake of Alejandro's Open Your Eyes (1997), ironically starring Kidman's then-estranged husband Tom Cruise. Karl Williams

Rolling Stone

When it comes to turning the screws of psychological terror, Amenebar is an expert technician. Peter Travers

Village Voice

From beginning to end, Grace exists in a state of barely suppressed hysteria punctuated by moments of abject terror, all of which Kidman registers with extreme delicacy. Amy Taubin

Los Angeles Times

Though Kidman doesn't hesitate to make Grace high-strung and as tightly wound as they come, she also projects vulnerability and courage when they're called for. It's an intense, involving performance, and it dominates and energizes a film that would be lost without it. Kenneth Turan

Product Details

• UPC: 065935827320
• Source: ALLIANCE CANADA
• Region Code: 1
• Presentation: Wide Screen
• Editions: Dubbed
• Time: 1:44:00
• Sales Rank: 19,598

This DVD is also available as part of a box set:

• Others / Signs