The Others (2001 film)
Encyclopedia
The Others is a 2001 psychological horror
Psychological horror
Psychological horror is a subgenre of horror fiction that relies on character fears, guilt, beliefs, eerie sound effects, relevant music and emotional instability to build tension and further the plot...

 film by the Spanish
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

-Chilean
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...

 director Alejandro Amenábar
Alejandro Amenábar
Alejandro Fernando Amenábar Cantos is a Spanish- Chilean film director. Amenábar was born in Santiago, Chile to a Spanish mother and Chilean father, but the family moved to Spain just one year after his birth...

, starring Nicole Kidman
Nicole Kidman
Nicole Mary Kidman, AC is an American-born Australian actress, singer, film producer, spokesmodel, and humanitarian. After starring in a number of small Australian films and TV shows, Kidman's breakthrough was in the 1989 thriller Dead Calm...

. It is inspired partly by the novella The Turn of the Screw
The Turn of the Screw
The Turn of the Screw is a novella written by Henry James. Originally published in 1898, it is ostensibly a ghost story.Due to its ambiguous content, it became a favourite text of academics who subscribe to New Criticism. The novella has had differing interpretations, often mutually exclusive...

.

It won eight Goya Awards
Goya Awards
The Goya Awards, known in Spanish as los Premios Goya, are Spain's main national film awards, considered by many in Spain, and internationally, to be the Spanish equivalent of the American Academy Awards....

, including awards for Best Film and Best Director. This was the first English-language film ever to receive the Best Film Award at the Goyas
Goya Awards
The Goya Awards, known in Spanish as los Premios Goya, are Spain's main national film awards, considered by many in Spain, and internationally, to be the Spanish equivalent of the American Academy Awards....

 (Spain's national film awards), without a single word of Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

 spoken in it. The Others won Best Horror Film at the Saturn Awards, and Kidman received a Golden Globe and BAFTA nomination.

Plot

Grace Stewart (Kidman) is a Catholic
Catholic
The word catholic comes from the Greek phrase , meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole"...

 mother who lives with her two small children in a remote country house in the British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 Crown Dependency
Crown dependency
The Crown Dependencies are British possessions of the Crown, as opposed to overseas territories of the United Kingdom. They comprise the Channel Island Bailiwicks of Jersey and Guernsey in the English Channel, and the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea....

 of Guernsey
Guernsey
Guernsey, officially the Bailiwick of Guernsey is a British Crown dependency in the English Channel off the coast of Normandy.The Bailiwick, as a governing entity, embraces not only all 10 parishes on the Island of Guernsey, but also the islands of Herm, Jethou, Burhou, and Lihou and their islet...

, in the immediate aftermath of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. The children, Anne (Alakina Mann
Alakina Mann
Alakina Mann is an English actress. She has had a few roles, such as playing Anne in The Others and also appeared in the 2003 movie Girl with a Pearl Earring as Cornelia Vermeer...

) and Nicholas (James Bentley
James Bentley (actor)
James Bentley is a child actor who won a Young Artist Award for playing Nicholas Stewart in the 2001 psychological horror film The Others. He also played Michael Sellers in The Life and Death of Peter Sellers in 2004.-External links:...

), have an uncommon disease
Disease
A disease is an abnormal condition affecting the body of an organism. It is often construed to be a medical condition associated with specific symptoms and signs. It may be caused by external factors, such as infectious disease, or it may be caused by internal dysfunctions, such as autoimmune...

 characterized by photosensitivity
Photosensitivity
Photosensitivity is the amount to which an object reacts upon receiving photons, especially visible light.- Human medicine :Sensitivity of the skin to a light source can take various forms. People with particular skin types are more sensitive to sunburn...

, so their lives are structured around a series of complex rules designed to protect them from inadvertent exposure to sunlight
Sunlight
Sunlight, in the broad sense, is the total frequency spectrum of electromagnetic radiation given off by the Sun. On Earth, sunlight is filtered through the Earth's atmosphere, and solar radiation is obvious as daylight when the Sun is above the horizon.When the direct solar radiation is not blocked...

.

The new arrival of three servants at the house — an aging nanny
Nanny
A nanny, childminder or child care provider, is an individual who provides care for one or more children in a family as a service...

 and servant named Mrs. Bertha Mills (Fionnula Flanagan), an elderly gardener named Mr. Edmund Tuttle (Eric Sykes
Eric Sykes
Eric Sykes, CBE is an English radio, television and film writer, actor and director whose performing career has spanned more than 50 years. He frequently wrote for and/or performed with many other leading comedy performers and writers of the period, including Tony Hancock, Spike Milligan, Peter...

), and a young mute girl named Lydia (Elaine Cassidy
Elaine Cassidy
Elaine Cassidy is an award-winning Irish actress and is best known for playing the lead character Abby Mills in the American CBS TV series Harper's Island, Felicia in Felicia's Journey opposite Bob Hoskins, Runt in Disco Pigs opposite Cillian Murphy, and Lydia in The Others.-Early life:Elaine...

) — coincides with a number of odd events, and Grace begins to fear that they are not alone. Anne draws pictures of four people: a man, a woman, a boy called Victor, and an old woman, all of whom she says she has seen in the house. A piano
Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...

 is heard from inside a locked room when no one is inside. Grace finds and examines a "book of the dead," which shows mourning portraits taken in the 19th century
19th century
The 19th century was a period in history marked by the collapse of the Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Holy Roman and Mughal empires...

 of recently deceased corpses. Doors which Grace believes to have been closed are found mysteriously ajar. Grace tries hunting down the "intruders" with a shotgun but cannot find them. She scolds her daughter for believing in ghost
Ghost
In traditional belief and fiction, a ghost is the soul or spirit of a deceased person or animal that can appear, in visible form or other manifestation, to the living. Descriptions of the apparition of ghosts vary widely from an invisible presence to translucent or barely visible wispy shapes, to...

s — until she hears them herself. Eventually, convincing herself that something unholy
Unholy
Unholy is the name of a 2005 album by British musician Martin Grech.-Track listing:#"Guiltless" – 7:42#"Venus" – 5:47#"Erosion And Regeneration" – 5:07#"I Am Chromosome" – 5:00#"An End" – 3:09#"Holy Father Inferior" – 9:25#"Worldly Divine" – 4:54...

 is in the house, she runs out in the fog to get the local priest
Priest
A priest is a person authorized to perform the sacred rites of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in particular, rites of sacrifice to, and propitiation of, a deity or deities...

 to bless the house. Meanwhile, the servants, led by Mrs. Mills, are clearly up to something of their own. The gardener buries a headstone
Headstone
A headstone, tombstone, or gravestone is a marker, usually stone, that is placed over a grave. In most cases they have the deceased's name, date of birth, and date of death inscribed on them, along with a personal message, or prayer.- Use :...

 under autumn
Autumn
Autumn is one of the four temperate seasons. Autumn marks the transition from summer into winter usually in September or March when the arrival of night becomes noticeably earlier....

 leaves
Leaves
-History:Vocalist Arnar Gudjonsson was formerly the guitarist with Mower, and he was joined by Hallur Hallsson , Arnar Ólafsson , Bjarni Grímsson , and Andri Ásgrímsson . Late in 2001 they played with Emiliana Torrini and drew early praise from the New York Times...

, and Mrs. Mills listens faithfully to Anne's allegations against her mother.

Out in the forest
Forest
A forest, also referred to as a wood or the woods, is an area with a high density of trees. As with cities, depending where you are in the world, what is considered a forest may vary significantly in size and have various classification according to how and what of the forest is composed...

, Grace loses herself in the heavy fog
Fog
Fog is a collection of water droplets or ice crystals suspended in the air at or near the Earth's surface. While fog is a type of stratus cloud, the term "fog" is typically distinguished from the more generic term "cloud" in that fog is low-lying, and the moisture in the fog is often generated...

, but she miraculously discovers her husband Charles (Christopher Eccleston
Christopher Eccleston
Christopher Eccleston is an English stage, film and television actor. His films include Let Him Have It, Shallow Grave, Elizabeth, 28 Days Later, Gone in 60 Seconds, The Others, and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra...

), who she thought had been killed in the war, and brings him back to the house. Charles is distant during the one day he spends in the house, and Mrs. Mills is heard telling Mr. Tuttle, "I do not think he knows where he is." Grace later sees the old woman from Anne's drawing dressed up like her daughter. Grace says, "You are not my daughter!" and attacks her. However, she finds that she has actually attacked her daughter instead. Anne refuses to be near her mother afterward, while Grace swears she saw the old woman. Mrs. Mills tells Anne that she too has seen the people, but they cannot yet tell the mother because Grace will not accept what she is not ready for. Charles is stunned when Anne tells him the things her mother did to her. He says he must leave for the front
Front
Front may refer to:common noun* Front , area where armies are engaged in conflict** Front , Front , types of military formations* Front , term used by Goffman* Front organization* Ice front of a glacier...

 and disappears again. After Charles leaves, Anne continues to see things, including Victor's whole family and the old woman. Grace breaks down to Mrs. Mills, who claims that "sometimes the world of the dead gets mixed up with the world of the living."
One morning, Grace wakes to the children's screams: all of the curtains in the house have disappeared, as Anne had said they might. When the servants refuse to help look for them, Grace realizes that they are somehow involved. Hiding the children from the light, she banishes the servants from the house.

That night, Anne and Nicholas sneak out of the house to find their father and stumble across the hidden graves. They find that the graves belong to the servants. At the same time, Grace goes to the servants' quarters and finds a photograph from the book of the dead and is horrified to see that it is of the three servants. The servants appear and follow after the children, who make it back into the house just as Grace emerges to hold off the servants with a shotgun. They then say that they had died of tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...

 more than 50 years before. The children run upstairs and hide, but are found by the strange old woman. Downstairs, the servants continue talking to Grace, telling her that the living and the dead have to learn to live together. Upstairs, Anne and Nicholas discover the old woman is acting as a medium in a séance
Séance
A séance is an attempt to communicate with spirits. The word "séance" comes from the French word for "seat," "session" or "sitting," from the Old French "seoir," "to sit." In French, the word's meaning is quite general: one may, for example, speak of "une séance de cinéma"...

 with Victor's parents. It is then that they learn the awful truth: the real ghosts are none other than Anne, Nicholas, and their mother, who is believed to have killed them in a fit of psychosis
Psychosis
Psychosis means abnormal condition of the mind, and is a generic psychiatric term for a mental state often described as involving a "loss of contact with reality"...

 before committing suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...

. Grace loses her temper and supernatural
Supernatural
The supernatural or is that which is not subject to the laws of nature, or more figuratively, that which is said to exist above and beyond nature...

ly attacks the visitors, each family witnessing a slightly different visage.

The truth finally clear to Grace, she breaks down with the children and remembers what happened just before the arrival of their new servants. Stricken with grief for her missing husband and increasingly frustrated by living in isolation
Solitude
Solitude is a state of seclusion or isolation, i.e., lack of contact with people. It may stem from bad relationships, deliberate choice, infectious disease, mental disorders, neurological disorders or circumstances of employment or situation .Short-term solitude is often valued as a time when one...

 she went insane, smothered her children with a pillow and then, in shock after realizing what she had done, shot herself. When she awoke, she assumed that God
God
God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....

 had granted her family a miracle
Miracle
A miracle often denotes an event attributed to divine intervention. Alternatively, it may be an event attributed to a miracle worker, saint, or religious leader. A miracle is sometimes thought of as a perceptible interruption of the laws of nature. Others suggest that a god may work with the laws...

 by offering them a second chance at life. Grace and the children realize that Charles is also dead, but he is not aware of it. Mrs. Mills appears and informs Grace that they will learn to get along, and sometimes won't even notice the living people who inhabit their house. She also informs them that since the children no longer have their mortal bodies, they are not sensitive to light anymore, and for the first time the children freely enjoy the sunlight coming through the windows. From the window, Grace and her children look outside as Victor's family moves out.

Cast

  • Nicole Kidman
    Nicole Kidman
    Nicole Mary Kidman, AC is an American-born Australian actress, singer, film producer, spokesmodel, and humanitarian. After starring in a number of small Australian films and TV shows, Kidman's breakthrough was in the 1989 thriller Dead Calm...

     as Grace Stewart
  • Alakina Mann
    Alakina Mann
    Alakina Mann is an English actress. She has had a few roles, such as playing Anne in The Others and also appeared in the 2003 movie Girl with a Pearl Earring as Cornelia Vermeer...

     as Anne Stewart, Grace's daughter.
  • James Bentley
    James Bentley (actor)
    James Bentley is a child actor who won a Young Artist Award for playing Nicholas Stewart in the 2001 psychological horror film The Others. He also played Michael Sellers in The Life and Death of Peter Sellers in 2004.-External links:...

     as Nicholas Stewart, Grace's son and Anne's younger brother.
  • Fionnula Flanagan as Bertha Mills, the new housekeeper.
  • Eric Sykes
    Eric Sykes
    Eric Sykes, CBE is an English radio, television and film writer, actor and director whose performing career has spanned more than 50 years. He frequently wrote for and/or performed with many other leading comedy performers and writers of the period, including Tony Hancock, Spike Milligan, Peter...

     as Edmund Tuttle, the new gardener.
  • Elaine Cassidy
    Elaine Cassidy
    Elaine Cassidy is an award-winning Irish actress and is best known for playing the lead character Abby Mills in the American CBS TV series Harper's Island, Felicia in Felicia's Journey opposite Bob Hoskins, Runt in Disco Pigs opposite Cillian Murphy, and Lydia in The Others.-Early life:Elaine...

     as Lydia, the new maid.
  • Christopher Eccleston
    Christopher Eccleston
    Christopher Eccleston is an English stage, film and television actor. His films include Let Him Have It, Shallow Grave, Elizabeth, 28 Days Later, Gone in 60 Seconds, The Others, and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra...

     as Charles Stewart, Grace's husband, who went into the war years earlier.

Box office

The film was released August 10, 2001 in 1,678 theatres in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 and Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 and grossed $14 million its opening weekend, ranking fourth at the box office. It stayed in fourth for three more weeks, expanding to more theaters. During the weekend of September 21–23, it was second at the box office, grossing $5 million in 2,801 theatres. The film, which cost $17 million to produce, eventually grossed $96.5 million in the United States and Canada, and $113.4 million in other countries, for a worldwide total gross of $209.9 million.

Critical reception

On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...

, 84% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 143 reviews. On Metacritic
Metacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...

, the film had an average score of 74 out of 100, based on 29 reviews. Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...

 gave the film two and a half stars out of four, praising that "...Alejandro Amenabar, has the patience to create a languorous, dreamy atmosphere, and Nicole Kidman succeeds in convincing us that she is a normal person in a disturbing situation and not just a standard-issue horror movie hysteric." However, he criticized that "in drawing out his effects, Amenábar is a little too confident that style can substitute for substance."

Accolades

  • BAFTA Awards:
    • Best Actress - (Nicole Kidman)
  • Goya Awards
    Goya Awards
    The Goya Awards, known in Spanish as los Premios Goya, are Spain's main national film awards, considered by many in Spain, and internationally, to be the Spanish equivalent of the American Academy Awards....

    :
    • Best Cinematography (Javier Aguirresarobe)
    • Best Director (Alejandro Amenábar)
    • Best Editing (Nacho Ruiz Capillas)
    • Best Film
    • Best Production Design
    • Best Production Supervision
    • Best Screenplay - Original (Alejandro Amenábar)
    • Best Sound
  • Kansas City Film Critics
    Kansas City Film Critics Circle Awards 2001
    The 36th Loutzenhiser Awards, honoring the best in film for 2001, were given on 28 January 2002.Peter Jackson's first part of the "The Lord of the Rings film trilogy", The Fellowship of the Ring won two awards: Best Film and Director...

    :
    • Best Actress (Nicole Kidman)
  • London Film Critics
    London Film Critics Circle Awards 2001
    The 22nd London Film Critics' Circle Awards, given by the London Film Critics Circle in 2002, honoured the best in film for 2001.-British:*Actor of the Year: Ewan McGregor — Moulin Rouge!*Actress of the Year: Judi Dench — Iris...

    :
    • Best Actress of the Year (Nicole Kidman)
  • Online Film Critics
    Online Film Critics Society Awards 2001
    The 5th Online Film Critics Society Awards, honoring the best in filmmaking in 2001, were given on 2 January 2002.-Top 10 films:#Memento #Mulholland Dr....

    :
    • Best Actress (Nicole Kidman)
    • Best Screenplay - Original (Alejandro Amenábar)
  • Golden Globe Awards:
    • Best Actress Drama - (Nicole Kidman)
  • Saturn Awards:
    • Best Actress - (Nicole Kidman)
    • Best Horror Film
      Saturn Award for Best Horror Film
      The following are a list of Saturn Award winners for Best Horror Film:-References:...


In pop culture

  • Scary Movie 3
    Scary Movie 3
    Scary Movie 3 is a 2003 American science fiction comedy film, which parodies the horror, sci-fi, and mystery genres, directed by David Zucker. It is the third film of the Scary Movie franchise, as well as the first to have no involvement from the Wayans family...

    includes parodies of scenes from the film.

  • Australian Band Elora Danan
    Elora Danan (band)
    Elora Danan were an Australian alternative rock band from Perth, Western Australia, formed in late 2006 from various other bands in the local scene who had ended including As A Weapon and Alleged....

     wrote a song about the film called "Thank God For Their Growth In Faith And Love" (a line seen on the children's blackboard in a later scene) which was a track on their debut EP We All Have Secrets.

  • Electronic music
    Electronic music
    Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...

     artist Venetian Snares
    Venetian Snares
    Venetian Snares is the main performing alias of Canadian electronic musician Aaron Funk .From Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, Funk is known for making electronic music often in odd numbered time signatures...

     uses a sample from the film in the song "Children's Limbo" on the album Find Candace
    Find Candace
    Find Candace is a 2003 breakcore album by Venetian Snares. The album was considered a continuation of his previously-released album Doll Doll Doll, from which both the original "Befriend A Childkiller" and "Dolleater" were taken....

    .

External links

The Others: Mystery - Thriller During World War Two
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