others Film review
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"The Others" - Film Review.
Certificate: 12
Running time: 101 minutes
Starring: Nicole Kidman, Fionnula Flanagan, Christopher Eccleston, Eric Sykes, Elaine Cassidy, Alakina Mann, James Bentley
"The others" is a psychological horror set on the remote channel island of Jersey in 1945.
Directed by Alejandro Amenbar, a young Spanish director who had beforehand directed Spanish films such as "Thesis" in 1996 and "Open Your Eyes" in 1999 (both of which were thrillers), directed his first English film being "The Others".
The film takes all the typical ingredients you'd expect to find in a typical "horror" film. The gloomy isolated mansion perpetually shrouded in fog, mysterious noises, creepy characters, it even has the classic self-playing piano.
Nicole Kidman has always brought an air of cold detachment to her roles, a characteristic that's not always endearing, but one that serves her well as the highly strung and forbidding Grace (even her English accent is tolerable). Grace imposes a strict religious upbringing on her children Anne (Alakina Mann) and Nicolas (James Bentley). They are all confined to live on the remote Jersey Island while Graces husband has been away for eighteen months fighting in World War 2.
The eerie mansion itself is given an even more chilling atmosphere by the fact that there is no electricity and the curtains are always drawn due to Anne and Nicolas having a photosensitive disorder to the possible fatal effects of sunlight meaning that the house is constantly dark and has a gloomy atmosphere.
The characters in the film all have certain "creepiness" to them...