The Others (2001 film)

Step into a world shrouded in perpetual twilight, where a mother fiercely protects her photosensitive children from a mysterious, unseen presence. Alejandro Amenábar's "The Others" redefined the supernatural thriller, weaving a tale of chilling suspense and emotional depth that builds to one of cinema's most unforgettable twists. Prepare to question everything you think you know about ghosts and the living... The film expertly crafts a gothic, unsettling atmosphere and psychological dread without relying on conventional jump scares. Nicole Kidman's powerful and nuanced performance anchors the entire narrative, earning widespread critical acclaim and awards. Its groundbreaking plot twist fundamentally re-contextualizes the entire story, solidifying its place as a modern horror classic.

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AI Summary

The film expertly crafts a gothic, unsettling atmosphere and psychological dread without relying on conventional jump scares.
Nicole Kidman's powerful and nuanced performance anchors the entire narrative, earning widespread critical acclaim and awards.
Its groundbreaking plot twist fundamentally re-contextualizes the entire story, solidifying its place as a modern horror classic.

A House Shrouded in Shadow

Our story begins in 1945, on the fog-shrouded island of Jersey, just after World War II. Here, Grace Stewart — a devout, meticulous mother — lives in a grand, isolated country manor with her two young children, Anne and Nicholas.

The children suffer from a rare and severe photosensitivity, meaning even a sliver of sunlight can harm them. Grace keeps their home in a state of perpetual gloom, with heavy curtains drawn tight, casting the entire house in an eerie, constant twilight.

New Arrivals, Old Secrets

One day, three new servants arrive unexpectedly at the remote estate: Mrs. Bertha Mills, a cryptic housekeeper; Edmund Tuttle, the gardener; and Lydia, a silent maid. Grace hires them, finding comfort in their claim that they worked in the house years ago.

Soon after their arrival, unsettling events begin. Anne, the daughter, insists she sees a spectral family — a young boy named Victor, his parents, and an elderly blind woman. Grace dismisses these claims as childhood fantasies, but a creeping sense of unease begins to settle upon her.

Grace herself starts to hear disembodied voices and footsteps echoing through the cavernous halls. Convinced they have intruders, she orders the house searched. What she finds in a storage room sends a shiver down her spine: a photo album filled with eerie, century-old post-mortem photographs.

Mrs. Mills reveals that the house was indeed emptied in 1891 due to a devastating tuberculosis outbreak. Grace, a staunch Catholic, struggles to reconcile these escalating supernatural occurrences with her faith, yet the evidence of something 'other' becomes undeniable.

The chilling phenomena intensify, culminating in a piano playing itself in the dead of night. Terrified, Grace ventures out into the woods, desperate to find a priest to bless the house. It's there she encounters a ghost from her own past — her husband, Charles, whom she believed had died in the war.

Charles's return, however, offers little comfort. He is distant, withdrawn, seemingly suffering from the horrors of war. His presence is fleeting, and he soon departs again, leaving Grace to face the growing terrors of the house alone.

The next morning brings a new horror: all the protective curtains are gone, exposing Anne and Nicholas to the very light that could harm them. Grace, furious, blames and expels the servants. But the truth about the servants, and the house itself, is far more disturbing.

The children soon make a terrifying discovery in the cemetery: the gravestones belong to Mrs. Mills, Tuttle, and Lydia, all of whom perished in that 1891 tuberculosis outbreak. They are not merely employees; they are fellow spirits.

The Revelation

Grace then confronts the 'intruders' Anne spoke of. It's a living family, holding a séance in her parlor, attempting to communicate with the spirits they sense. The medium, the elderly blind woman, reveals a horrific truth through automatic writing.

Grace, despondent after learning her husband died in the war, smothered her own children with a pillow, then took her own life with a rifle. The 'others' Anne spoke of are the living family, and Grace, Anne, Nicholas — and even the servants — are all ghosts, haunting their own home.

In a heartbreaking moment, Grace embraces her children, admitting her terrible act. She had awoken after her suicide believing God had granted them a second chance at life. Now, the full, tragic reality sinks in.

The living family, terrified by the escalating ghostly activity, abandons the house. For Anne and Nicholas, a profound change occurs: the sunlight no longer harms them. They are truly free from their earthly affliction, embracing their new spectral reality.

As the house goes up for sale once more, Mrs. Mills advises Grace and her children that they must learn to cohabit with future living 'intruders.' Grace, resolute, affirms that the house is theirs, and they will never leave.

Filming and Impact

Despite its British setting, "The Others" was primarily filmed in Spain, utilizing the grand Palacio de los Hornillos in Cantabria and locations in Madrid to create its distinctive, isolated atmosphere.

Box Office Triumph

Released in 2001, "The Others" was a massive commercial success. On a modest budget of $17 million, it earned over $210 million worldwide. In Spain, it even became the highest-grossing Spanish film of all time, a remarkable feat for an English-language production.

Critical Acclaim

Critics universally lauded the film, praising Alejandro Amenábar's masterful direction and screenplay, the suffocating atmosphere, and especially Nicole Kidman's gripping performance. Rotten Tomatoes describes it as a 'spooky thriller that reminds us that a movie doesn't need expensive special effects to be creepy.'

A. O. Scott of The New York Times highlighted Kidman's work, stating she 'embodies this unstable amalgam with a conviction that is in itself terrifying.' Roger Ebert noted Amenábar's 'patience to create a languorous, dreamy atmosphere,' while Time Out called it 'a clammy, ingenious film, one of the best studio movies of the year.'

Award-Winning Horror

The film swept the 16th Goya Awards, Spain's national film awards, taking home eight accolades including Best Film, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay. It was a historic win, being the first English-language film with no Spanish dialogue to win Best Film.

It also garnered major international recognition, with Nicole Kidman winning Best Actress at the Saturn Awards and Fangoria Chainsaw Awards, and receiving nominations at the Golden Globes and BAFTAs. "The Others" is widely considered a masterpiece of modern horror, lauded as one of the best films of the 2000s.

Article

The Others (2001 film)

The Others (Spanish: Los otros) is a 2001 psychological and Gothic 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.

Plot

The Others (2001 film)

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.

Production

The Others (2001 film)

Palacio de los Hornillos, in Las Fraguas, Arenas de Iguña

Filming locations included Madrid and the Palacio de los Hornillos mansion in Las Fraguas, Spain. William Skidelsky of The Observer suggested that it was inspired by the 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw by Henry James.

Reception

Box office

The Others was released in the United States and Canada by Dimension Films, opening on August 10, 2001 in 1,678 theaters. It grossed $14 million its opening weekend, ranking fourth at the U.S. box office behind American Pie 2, Rush Hour 2 and The Princess Diaries. It stayed in fourth place for three more weeks, expanding to more theaters. During the weekend of September 21 to 23, it was second at the box office, grossing $5 million in 2,801 theaters. The film, which cost $17 million to produce, grossed $96.5 million in the United States and Canada. It grossed $24 million in Spain, becoming the highest-grossing Spanish film of all time, beating the record set earlier that year by Torrente 2: Mission in Marbella. It grossed $113.4 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $210 million.

Critical response

Nicole Kidman's performance received acclaim.

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 84% of 174 critics' reviews are positive. The website's consensus reads: "The Others is a spooky thriller that reminds us that a movie doesn't need expensive special effects to be creepy." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 74 out of 100, based on 29 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.

A. O. Scott of The New York Times wrote: "The Others is a flawed if interesting vehicle. The anxious indeterminacy of the first section proves hard to sustain, and as Mr. Amenábar moves away from elegant minimalism, the story begins to become cluttered and confusing, rather than spare and enigmatic." Scott highlighted Kidman's performance, writing that she "embodies this unstable amalgam with a conviction that is in itself terrifying. The icy reserve that sometimes stands in the way of her expressive gifts here becomes the foundation of her most emotionally layered performance to date."

Roger Ebert gave The Others two and a half out of four, writing: "Alejandro Amenábar 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 felt that "in drawing out his effects, Amenábar is a little too confident that style can substitute for substance".

Neil Smith of the BBC awarded The Others four out of five, writing: "Shot in oppressive sepia amid near-darkness (Grace's children having a rare ailment that precludes exposure to sunlight), Amenábar racks up the tension to unbearable levels." Time Out praised it as "confident and controlled... Absence makes the heart beat faster: the absence of light, the corporeal absence of loved ones. Shrewdly cast, Kidman is pitch perfect. It's a clammy, ingenious film, one of the best studio movies of the year."

Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times cited Kidman's performance as the greatest strength, writing that she "has thrown herself into her role as if it were Lady Macbeth on the London stage, with formidable results. 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." In 2025, The Hollywood Reporter named The Others the 14th-greatest horror film of the 21st century.

Accolades

<table><thead><tr><th>Institution</th><th>Category</th><th>Recipient</th><th>Result</th><th>Ref.</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>British Academy Film Awards</td><td>Best Actress in a Leading Role</td><td>Nicole Kidman</td><td>Nominated</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Best Original Screenplay</td><td>Alejandro Amenábar</td><td>Nominated</td></tr><tr><td>Fangoria Chainsaw Awards</td><td>Best Actress</td><td>Nicole Kidman</td><td>Won</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Best Supporting Actress</td><td>Fionnula Flanagan</td><td>Nominated</td></tr><tr><td>Best Wide-Release Film</td><td>The Others</td><td>Nominated</td></tr><tr><td>Golden Globe Awards</td><td>Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama</td><td>Nicole Kidman</td><td>Nominated</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>GoldSpirit Awards</td><td>Best Original Score</td><td>Alejandro Amenábar</td><td>Nominated</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Goya Awards</td><td>Best Film</td><td>The Others</td><td>Won</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Best Director</td><td>Alejandro Amenábar</td><td>Won</td></tr><tr><td>Best Actress</td><td>Nicole Kidman</td><td>Nominated</td></tr><tr><td>Best New Actor</td><td>James Bentley</td><td>Nominated</td></tr><tr><td>Best New Actress</td><td>Alakina Mann</td><td>Nominated</td></tr><tr><td>Best Cinematography</td><td>Javier Aguirresarobe</td><td>Won</td></tr><tr><td>Best Editing</td><td>Nacho Ruiz Capillas</td><td>Won</td></tr><tr><td>Best Art Direction</td><td>Benjamín Fernández</td><td>Won</td></tr><tr><td>Best Production Supervision</td><td></td><td>Won</td></tr><tr><td>Best Original Screenplay</td><td>Alejandro Amenábar</td><td>Won</td></tr><tr><td>Best Original Score</td><td>Alejandro Amenábar</td><td>Nominated</td></tr><tr><td>Best Sound</td><td></td><td>Won</td></tr><tr><td>Best Costume Design</td><td>Sonia Grande</td><td>Nominated</td></tr><tr><td>Best Makeup and Hairstyles</td><td></td><td>Nominated</td></tr><tr><td>Best Special Effects</td><td></td><td>Nominated</td></tr><tr><td>Kansas City Film Critic Circle Awards</td><td>Best Actress</td><td>Nicole Kidman</td><td>Won</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>London Film Critics' Circle</td><td>Actress of the Year</td><td>Nicole Kidman</td><td>Won</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Online Film Critics</td><td>Best Actress</td><td>Nicole Kidman</td><td>Nominated</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Best Original Screenplay</td><td>Alejandro Amenábar</td><td>Won</td></tr><tr><td>Satellite Awards</td><td>Best Actress</td><td>Nicole Kidman</td><td>Nominated</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Best Supporting Actress</td><td>Fionnula Flanagan</td><td>Nominated</td></tr><tr><td>Best Original Screenplay</td><td>Alejandro Amenábar</td><td>Nominated</td></tr><tr><td>Best Film</td><td>The Others</td><td>Nominated</td></tr><tr><td>Best Sound</td><td></td><td>Nominated</td></tr><tr><td>Best Art Direction</td><td></td><td>Nominated</td></tr><tr><td>Saturn Awards</td><td>Best Actress</td><td>Nicole Kidman</td><td>Won</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Best Supporting Actress</td><td>Fionnula Flanagan</td><td>Won</td></tr><tr><td>Best Performance by a Younger Actor</td><td>Alakina Mann</td><td>Nominated</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Best Horror Film</td><td>The Others</td><td>Won</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Best Director</td><td>Alejandro Amenábar</td><td>Nominated</td></tr><tr><td>Best Writing</td><td>Alejandro Amenábar</td><td>Nominated</td></tr><tr><td>Venice Film Festival</td><td>Golden Lion Award</td><td>Alejandro Amenábar</td><td>Nominated</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Young Artist Awards</td><td>Best Supporting Young Actress</td><td>Alakina Mann</td><td>Nominated</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Best Young Actor</td><td>James Bentley</td><td>Won</td></tr><tr><td>Best Family Feature Film – Drama</td><td>The Others</td><td>Nominated</td></tr></tbody></table>

Home media

On 14 May 2002, Buena Vista Home Entertainment released a two-disc collector's edition DVD. On 20 September 2011, Lionsgate released the film on Blu-ray. In July 2023, The Criterion Collection announced a forthcoming 4K UHD Blu-ray edition of the film scheduled for release on 24 October 2023. StudioCanal concurrently announced distribution for a 4K UHD Blu-ray in Europe.

Planned remake

The Others (2001 film)

In April 2020, Sentient Entertainment acquired the remake rights to The Others, with the company planning to revamp the film by setting it in the present day. Later that year, it was announced that Universal Pictures will co-produce and distribute the film with Sentient.