The Others

 The Stewart family reside in a perennially fog-shrouded manor house in the middle of the Jersey island countryside. The matriarch, Grace (Nicole Kidman) looks after her two young children (Alakina Mann and James Bentley) alone ever since her husband failed to return from the just-ended second world war. The kids suffer from a rare condition where the sunlight is actually harmful to them; Their life is a succession of shuttered windows and candlelight.

 It's a rich setup for a traditional ghost story, in other words, even before three strangers (Fionnula Flanagan, Eric Sykes and Elaine Cassidy) turn up at her door looking for employment as domestic help - and to turn the screws, as it were.
 What follows is a pretty well crafted gothic mystery as an initially sceptic Grace slowly comes to realize the ghosts her daughter keeps complaining about might not be just in her imagination.

 Director Alejandro Amenábar and cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe nail the gothic atmosphere - lamp-lit jaunts through darkened, well-appointed hallways, mist clawing at the grounds, the works. Amenábar also provides a pleasingly old-school soundtrack (depressing reeds abound!) and a script that's more successful on its psychological aspects than on its attempts to be a metaphysical puzzlebox.

 It's not particularly scary, either. It drips with menace early on, but the nature of its central mystery robs it of the sort of visceral punch these stories excel at (consider El Orfanato, another Spanish gothic offer from the same decade). It didn't help at all that I managed to guess what was going on fairly early on, either. Here's an interesting tidbit: Apparently dialog lines were erased from the theatrical version on later releases, to make what's going on harder to figure out; I wonder if I would have liked it better had I watched it first in this later incarnation.

  The acting is excellent across the board. Kidman was born to play this sort of character - visually, she has the aristocratic airs and porcelain pallor requisite for a gothic heroine, and more importantly the talent to portray her character's complex, fraying arc. The kids are excellent, too, especially Mann, and Flanagan is splendid as the housekeeper, adding a dollop of sorely needed humour.

 In the end I'm left with a movie I like but can't love - a strangely inert film that's all class but feels slightly lacking in substance. Even if I appreciate what it's trying to do, it doesn't do much for me.
 But it's good enough I don't begrudge it the high esteem in which it's generally regarded, and would recommend it in a heartbeat if you're in the market for this sort of thing.