The Others [Criterion Collection] [Blu-ray]

Director: Alejandro Amenábar Alejandro Amenábar

Overview

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.

Product Details

Release Date:	10/24/2023
UPC:	0715515288118
Original Release:	2001
Rating:	PG-13
Source:	Criterion Collection
Language:	English
Time:	1:44:00
Sales rank:	2,902

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Nicole Kidman	Grace
Alakina Mann	Anne
James Bentley	Nicholas
Fionnula Flanagan	Mrs. Bertha Mills
Christopher Eccleston	Charles
Eric Sykes	Tuttle
Elaine Cassidy	Lydia
Gordon Reid	Assistant
Keith Allen	Mr. Marlish
Michelle Fairley	Mrs. Marlish
Alexander Vince	Victor
Ricardo Lopez	Second Assistant
Aldo Grilo	Gardener
Renée Asherson	Old Lady,Actor
Ricardo López Aranda	2nd Assistant
Renée Ascherson	Actor
Renée Ashershon	Old Lady
Alejandro Amenábar	Composer

Technical Credits

Alejandro Amenábar

Tom Cruise	Executive Producer,Producer
Shaheen Baig	Casting
Felix Berges	Special Effects
Fernando Bovaira	Producer
Jina Jay	Casting
Derek Langley	Special Effects
Sunmin Park	Producer
Miguel Pedregosa	Stunts
Rick Schwartz	Executive Producer,Producer
Paula Wagner	Executive Producer,Producer
Harvey Weinstein	Executive Producer,Executive Producer,Producer,Producer
Nike Alonso	Special Effects
John Bailey	Sound Effects
Les Brock	Sound Effects
Alejandro Amenábar	Director,Screenwriter
José Luis Cuerda	Producer
Chris Barrett	Sound Effects
John Bateman	Sound Effects
Juan Cuevas	Stunts
Sergio Bürmann	Sound Effects
Graham Aikman	Special Effects
Javier Chinchilla	Casting

Editorial Reviews

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.

Barnes & Noble - Tony Nigro

Alejandro Amenabar's taut, highly effective thriller is such a refreshment simply because it delights in creating an old-fashioned set of rules for the viewer to go along with, and it results in a picture as noteworthy as The Sixth Sense in toying with viewer expectation and providing non-gratuitous scares that are genuinely earned. A rare movie that honestly deserves comparison with Alfred Hitchcock's sterling oeuvre, the film is helped out considerably by its focused, excellent performances, especially embodied in Nicole Kidman's magnificent turn as an icy, high-strung mother caught up in a maelstrom of frayed nerves. Kidman often seems miscast in certain movies, but here she marvelously conveys the character's nervous curiosity and provides a sturdy audience surrogate so that the film never seems too out of reach. The performances by the young cast are also superb, and Fionnula Flanagan registers strongly as the house's nanny. Surprising, narratively sound and armed with believable suspense, The Others proves that the haunted house genre need not be overwrought CGI and dated spooks in order to work. This is Amenabar's first English-language effort, which was co-produced by Kidman's ex Tom Cruise; his feature Open Your Eyes was remade as Vanilla Sky by writer/director Cameron Crowe, starring, of all people, Cruise.

All Movie Guide - Jason Clark

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

Rolling Stone - Peter Travers

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.

Village Voice - Amy Taubin

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.

Los Angeles Times - Kenneth Turan