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Others, The
Dimension Films


8.1

based on 29 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 59 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

FILM:

The Others

MPAA RATING: PG-13 for thematic elements and frightening moments

Starring Nicole Kidman, Christopher Eccleston, Fionnula Flanagan, Elaine Cassidy, and Eric Sykes

A supernatural thriller that begs the question of who to trust, what to fear and what to believe, then topples every assumption. (Dimension Films)

GENRE(S):	Suspense/Thriller
WRITTEN BY:	Alejandro Amenábar
DIRECTED BY:	Alejandro Amenábar
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: May 14, 2002 Video: May 14, 2002 Theatrical: August 10, 2001
RUNNING TIME:	104 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	France / Spain / USA

Kidman was nominated for a Golden Globe for her lead performance.

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Only some bumpy, arid passages in the script keep The Others out of the master class occupied by the likes of "The Sixth Sense" and, my favorite, 1961's "The Innocents."

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

An elegantly crafted entertainment, balanced between the psychological and the supernatural, that gets extra credit for not relying on computer effects.

Village Voice Amy Taubin

This is one scary movie, not because we see ghosts or monsters, but because Kidman makes us feel her fear as our own.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

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.

Variety Dennis Harvey

A luxuriously old-fashioned star vehicle custom-fit to its topliner's strengths, which come across to sensational effect.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

It's the atmospheric sideshow that earns the highest marks.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

A spare, discomfiting score and uniformly excellent performances, and you have a quiet little masterpiece of dark and chilling beauty.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

A fiendishly subtle horror movie, a goosebump-inducing exercise in suspense that uses your own imagination to scare you silly.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

The most sophisticated and satisfying ghost story on film since "The Sixth Sense."

New Times (L.A.) Luke Y. Thompson

If you like being scared, you should have fun. Bring a date to hold hands with.

Washington Post Rita Kempley

A tantalizing spine-tingler.

Slate David Edelstein

A minor-key ghost story with major jolts.

Mr. Showbiz Kevin Maynard

Some moviegoers are bound to take issue with the trick, "Sixth Sense"-style ending (or cynically see it coming), but The Others is mostly spooky fun, and a strong calling card for Amenabar.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

You can't take your eyes off Ms. Kidman; she has never played a role with more focused energy.

Chicago Tribune Mark Caro

A classic haunted-house story enshrouded in fog and steeped in portentous atmosphere. It gives you a case of the creeps oh-so slowly, then hits you with a clever, mind-warping way of saying, "Boo!"

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

The gimmicks, in the end, are too arbitrary to tie together in a memorably haunting fashion, though they do culminate in a Big Twist, a nifty one that almost -- but not quite -- makes you want to see the movie again.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

There are hints of madness in all the characters, and it gets creepier and more surreal as it goes along until it finally comes to a showstopping climax that took me completely by surprise and made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up straight.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

The suspense is as tingly as jalapenos on the tongue.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

The icy reserve that sometimes stands in the way of Kidman's expressive gifts here becomes the foundation of her most emotionally layered performance to date.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Beautiful to behold but lacking in any kind of palpable dread or suspense.

USA Today Mike Clark

Kidman gets kudos for giving the enterprise a touch of class, while the film gives the studio's library a rare pedigreed addition.

Boston Globe Jay Carr

Has everything you want in a supernatural thriller except thrills.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

In drawing out his effects, Amenabar is a little too confident that style can substitute for substance. As our suspense was supposed to be building, our impatience was outstripping it.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

Isn't much more than a proficient gothic mystery with a final twist that offers a satisfying little frisson before you start counting how many times it's been used before.

Chicago Reader Lisa Alspector

The payoff matters at least as much as the setup, and this story's secret is way too easy to guess.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

This is a subdued and sometimes subtle exercise in ghostly doings, going against the horror-movie grain by relying on quietude and understatement.

San Francisco Chronicle Wesley Morris

The Others is great as a collection of acknowledgments, but a ghost story made of a bunch of ghoulish thank-yous isn't that haunting.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

The big surprise is so obvious that it makes the deliberate pacing seem painfully slow, and Kidman's prissy accent and tight-lipped performance are more than a little grating.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

What Amenabar offers here is an unconvincing, pretentiously artsy pastiche of just about every hoary old gothic thriller you can think of.

The average user rating for this movie is 8.1 (out of 10) based on 59 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Andrew G. gave it a6:
A supernatural thriller that relies too much on Nicole Kidman, (in for me, her best performance to date), dragging it through an hour and forty minutes.

Liridon H. gave it a10:
Awsome movie!!! Great performance by Nicole Kidman. It scared me a lot. Which scared me weren't ghosts or monsters but the saying that sums up the movie : "sometimes the world of the dead gets mixed up with the world of the living".

Riren gave it a3:
Morose, pretentious and plodding. Pretty much everything in this movie has been done before, though The Others tries to fool you into believing otherwise by speeding up its narrative at the appropriate times and only pretending to explain itself. Just because this takes place during World War 2 instead of the present doesn't mean it's novel. It just gives the characters new accents. Really, the whole picture has two settings: quiet, and tense, and this lack of range seriously hurts its ability to earn its tension.

Graham M. gave it a9:
This is a great ghost movie. The atmosphere is great and the acting is great.

Laura B. gave it a9:
Great Film, It has an amazing twist and its full of action and has been beautifully made to mix genres to produce a wonderful film. Nicole Kidman is a legend!

G.M. D.K gave it a 10:
One of the best films of all time!

Jeff L gave it an 8:
Here is a movie that occupies a much darker territory than the sixth sense -- instead of a good man's transition into the afterworld, we have a woman's deeply troubling refusal to "move on." I often criticize Hollywood movies for presenting dark themes/issues and then attempting to frame those issues within a larger narrative of good/progress. Which is why this movie, to me, is so refreshing: it is, by all intents and purposes, standard Hollywood fair, but it is also uncompromising in its refusal to simplistically resolve its central thematic tension. It's the clever, well-crafted script that really comes through in this movie, and though others have commented that there are no overly scary scenes, it is the lingering sense of the irreconciliable that really gets under the skin.

Others, The Dimension Films

Others, The
Dimension Films