August 10, 2001 (United States)
September 7, 2001 (Spain)
The Others (Spanish: Los otros) is a 2001 psychological horror film written, directed and scored by Alejandro Amenábar, starring Nicole Kidman, Fionnula Flanagan, Christopher Eccleston, Elaine Cassidy, Eric Sykes, Alakina Mann and James Bentley. Set in 1945 in Jersey, it focuses on a woman and her two photosensitive children who experience supernatural phenomena in their manor after the arrival of new servants.
The Others was theatrically released in the United States on August 10, 2001, by Dimension Films, and in Spain on September 7, 2001, by Warner Sogefilms. It was a major critical and commercial success, grossing $210 million worldwide on a $17 million budget. Critics praised the atmosphere, visuals, performances (particularly Kidman), its writing and plot twist.
At the 16th Goya Awards, The Others earned a leading fifteen nominations and won in eight categories, including Best Film, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay. It was the first English-language film without Spanish dialogue to win Best Film at Spain's Goya Awards. It received six nominations at the 28th Saturn Awards, winning Best Horror Film, Best Actress (for Kidman), and Best Supporting Actress (for Flanagan). It was nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role (for Kidman) and Best Original Screenplay at the 55th British Academy Film Awards, and for Best Film at the 14th European Film Awards. Kidman was nominated for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama at the 59th Golden Globe Awards.
Storyline
In 1945, Grace Stewart resides in a remote country house in Jersey, a Channel Island formerly occupied by the Germans. As her young children, Anne and Nicholas, suffer from a severe sensitivity to light, Grace keeps the home darkened with heavy curtains. One day, Mrs. Bertha Mills, Edmund Tuttle and the mute Lydia arrive seeking employment. Grace hires them as the housekeeper, gardener, and maid, and learns they worked in the house years prior.
Anne claims to be visited by a young boy named Victor, his parents, and an elderly blind woman. Grace believes this is a fantasy, but after she hears footsteps and voices, she orders the house to be searched for intruders. In a storage room, she finds a nineteenth-century album containing photographs of corpses. Mrs. Mills recounts that many left the house in 1891 due to an outbreak of tuberculosis. Grace begins to fear there are supernatural entities in the house, but struggles to reconcile this with her Catholic faith.
Grace witnesses a piano playing itself and becomes convinced that the house is haunted. She runs outside in search of the local priest to bless the house and instructs Tuttle to check the gardens to see if a family has been buried there. Mrs. Mills instructs Tuttle to conceal gravestones with leaves. In the woods, Grace runs into her husband, Charles, whom she thought was killed in World War II, and brings him back to the house.
One day, Grace checks on Anne playing. To her horror, she finds an old woman wearing Anne's veiled communion dress who speaks in Anne's voice. Grace attacks the woman but finds she has actually attacked Anne. Charles tells Grace he must return to the front, rejecting her insistence that the war is over. He leaves the next morning.
Grace is horrified to find all of the curtains in the house have been removed, exposing Anne and Nicholas to sunlight. She accuses the servants and expels them. That night, the children discover that the headstones in the cemetery belong to the servants, and flee when the servants approach them. Grace finds a postmortem photograph of Mrs. Mills, Tuttle and Lydia, who all perished during the 1891 tuberculosis outbreak. Mrs. Mills tells Grace to talk to the "intruders".
Grace discovers that the elderly blind woman is a medium holding a séance with Victor's parents. They have discovered via automatic writing that Grace, despondent after Charles died in the war, smothered her children with a pillow and shot herself. Aghast, Grace realizes that the intruders are the living family, and that she, her children and the servants are haunting the house.
Embracing her children, Grace admits to her act of murder–suicide: she awoke after her suicide and believed that God had brought everyone back to life for a second chance. Victor and his family move out. Anne and Nicholas realize that sunlight no longer hurts them and enjoy it for the first time. The house goes up for sale and Mrs. Mills informs the Stewarts that they will have to learn to cohabit with future inhabitants. Grace and the children affirm that the house is theirs and that they will not leave.
Movie Trailer
- The Others (2001) (Trailers)