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  Amy
  
Jankowicz
The Others
USA / France / Spain, 2001
[Alejandro Amen�bar]
Nicole Kidman, Fionnula Flanagan, Eric Sykes, James Bentley
Thriller / Supernatural
  
Nicole Kidman stars in her best film yet with this exhausting ghost story. Moving into a large, remote country house with her two young children, she is greeted by three strangers who introduce themselves as the former staff of the house. As she is looking for staff, she welcomes in the butler, housekeeper, and a mute maid. She shows them round the house as a neat cinematic introduction to her and her history.

We learn that Kidman�s husband is away at war, and she misses him dreadfully. The children have an illness which renders their skin light-sensitive, meaning that the rooms they occupy have to be entirely free of daylight. For their own safety, they are locked into every room. These strictures add to the overwhelming sense of claustrophobia the films gives you. Soon, the manifestations of hauntings make themselves known, and the staff seem to know more about it than they should.

The brilliance of this film is to take the staples of ghost stories and to make them work like it�s the first time we�ve heard them. Footsteps on empty floors, disembodied voices, psychic children � are all tightly harnessed in a minimalist and thoroughly chilling manner, making us fill in the gaps. This is so strong that the film is an almost physically uncomfortable experience, and there is a definite sense of endurance to watching it. This almost unbearable tension is probably what led to the worse reviews �  it�s pretty draining. Kidman�s terse, bony acting is excellent, and there is a good satisfying twist in the end which, if not the last thing you ever expected, is beautifully and cleverly done.

I have no idea how involving the film will be on video, because the sense of envelopment in the film might not translate well. But I�ll definitely be renting it to find out, and if you ever catch it at the cinema, do not miss it.
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