The Others

With its dark old house, its persistent past and its invasive hauntings, Alejandro Amenábar’s fifth feature offers all the trappings of a classic gothic, while turning the screw with a very unusual perspective on these supernatural goings-on.

Alejandro Amenábar’s elegant chiller creates more tension from atmosphere alone than most other horror films do from vats full of fake blood.

The performances, writing, production design, cinematography, music, directing -- it's all top-notch. Everything about this movie really works.

The show belongs to Kidman, and snugly tailored as it is, she's surpassingly fine.

Shrewdly cast, Kidman is pitch perfect. It's a clammy, ingenious film, one of the best studio movies of the year.

It is well constructed, as opposed to incompetently deconstructed.

Nicole Kidman is at her icy best in this psychological thriller, showing the kind of silent inner fear that first brought her attention outside her native Australia in 1989's Dead Calm.

Few haunted-house sagas from the last half-century beg comparison to such long-established classics as The Uninvited, The Innocents, and The Haunting, but The Others instantly vaulted toward the top of the standings upon its initial release.

Amenábar’s approach makes it unique as a horror film dealing with trauma and repression, but from another point-of-view not usually depicted in horror movies.

After coming around to her daughter’s interpretation of events, Grace admits to feeling the presence of “something which is not at rest” — an apt description of the film itself, not to mention anyone watching it for the first time.