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The Others
The Others film poster
Directed by	Alejandro Amenábar
Produced by	Fernando Bovaira, José Luis Cuerda, StudioCanal
Written by	Alejandro Amenábar
Starring	Nicole Kidman Alakina Mann Christopher Eccleston Fionnuala Flanagan Elaine Cassidy James Bentley
Distributed by	Dimension Films
Release date(s)	2 August 2001
Running time	104 minutes
Country	Spain, France, United States
Language	English
Budget	$17,000,000 USD
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

The Others is a 2001 psychological horror/suspense film by the Spanish/Chilean director Alejandro Amenábar, starring Nicole Kidman. In the United States, it was rated PG-13 for thematic elements and frightening moments and runs around 100 minutes.

It won eight Goya Awards including awards for Best Film and Best Director. This was the first Spanish film ever to receive the Best Film Award at the Goyas (Spain's national film awards) with not a single word of Spanish spoken in it.

Tagline: Sooner or later, they will find you.

Contents 1 Cast 2 Plot summary 3 Box office performance 4 Critical reception 5 Awards 5.1 Won 6 See also 7 References 8 External links

• Nicole Kidman as Grace Stewart
• Fionnula Flanagan as Mrs. Bertha Mills
• Christopher Eccleston as Charles Stewart
• Alakina Mann as Anne Stewart
• James Bentley as Nicholas Stewart
• Eric Sykes as Mr. Edmund Tuttle
• Elaine Cassidy as Lydia
• Renée Asherson as Old Lady
• Gordon Reid as Assistant
• Keith Allen as Mr. Marlish
• Michelle Fairley as Mrs. Marlish
• Alexander Vince as Victor Marlish
• Ricardo López as Second Assistant
• Aldo Grilo as Gardener

The scene is set on the island of Jersey, in the immediate aftermath of World War Two.

Grace, a young war widow, and her two small children live in a remote house on the island and their lives are structured around a series of complex rules designed to protect them from inadvertent exposure to sunlight. The new arrival of three servants at the house (an ageing nanny, an elderly gardener, and a young mute girl) 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 a scary old woman — whom she says she has seen in the house. A piano plays when no one is in the locked room.

Grace is strict, and a Catholic who follows the Bible closely. She tries hunting down the "intruders" with a shotgun but cannot find them. She scolds her daughter for nonsense about ghosts until she hears them herself. Eventually convincing herself that something unholy is in the house, she runs out in the fog to get the local priest to bless the house.

Out in the forest, Grace loses herself in the heavy fog, but miraculously discovers Charles, her husband assumed lost in war, and brings him back to the house. However, he is distant, lonely, and stunned when Anne makes allegations about things her mother did to her. After spending one night with Grace, Charles disappears again.

Meanwhile, the servants, led by the ageing Bertha Mills, are clearly up to something of their own. The gardener buries three gravestones under autumn leaves, and Mrs. Mills listens faithfully to Anne's allegations against her mother.

After Charles leaves, Anne continues to see things, including Victor's whole family and a scary 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". The two women also find and examine a 'book of the dead', which shows mourning portraits taken in the 19th century of recently deceased corpses.

One morning, Grace wakes to the children's screams: all of the curtains in the house have been removed, and are missing. 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 and find the hidden graves. 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. Meanwhile, the children discover that the graves belonged to the servants. The servants, or rather ghosts of the servants, appear and give chase to the children, who make it back into the house just as Grace emerges to hold off the servants with a shotgun. The children run upstairs where they hide, but are found by the strange old woman.

Downstairs, the servants continue talking to Grace, telling her that they have to learn to live together. She begins to understand what they mean.

Upstairs, Anne and Nicholas discover the old woman is acting as a medium in a séance with Victor's parents. It is then that they learn the awful truth: the old woman is not the one who is a ghost; the ghosts are Anne, Nicholas and their mother. Grace loses her temper and supernaturally attacks the visitors. This sequence is quickly intercut with scenes from both Grace's viewpoint and the family's.

The truth is finally clear to Grace and the audience: She breaks down with the children and remembers what happened just before the arrival of their new servants; yearning for the company of her missing husband and increasingly frustrated by her children, she smothered them both with a pillow and then, realizing what she had done, shot herself. When she awoke, she assumed that God had granted her family a miracle.

Grace and the children realize that Charles is also dead, but he was not aware of this fact. The female servant is heard telling the gardener "I do not think he knows where he is".

Mrs. Mills appears and informs Grace that they will learn to get along, and sometimes they won't even notice the living people who inhabit their house.

Outside, Victor's family — less than happy with their haunted house — pack up and move out. From the window, Grace and her children watch as they drive away. Grace ends the film with the line that "this house is ours."

The film was released August 10, 2001 in 1,678 theaters in the United States and Canada and grossed $14 million its opening weekend, ranking 4th at the box office. It stayed in 4th for 3 more weeks, expanding to more theaters. During the weekend of September 21-23, it was the #2 film at the box office, grossing $5 million in 2,801 theaters.^[1] 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.^[2]

On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 83% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 143 reviews.^[3] On Metacritic, the film had an average score of 74 out of 100, based on 29 reviews.^[4]

• Goya 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:
  • Best Actress (Nicole Kidman)
• London Film Critics:
  • Best Actress of the Year (Nicole Kidman)
• Online Film Critics:
  • Best Screenplay - Original (Alejandro Amenábar)

• Cinema of Spain
• Twist ending

• The Others at the Internet Movie Database
• The Others at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Others at Metacritic

• The Others at Box Office Mojo
• The Others at All Movie Guide