Remember when Hollywood had the morality code? They couldn't show sex, violence, actors couldn't utter a profanity (like the word "virgin") or even have the villain get away with it. This resulted in a lot of films being awful, because the directors often could not create the mood to compensate. Peple like Hitchcock, however, knew how to create a dark and foreboding atmosphere without anything illicit. That's the closest thing I can compare to "The Others" - a thriller that's so perfectly woven together and without any cheap screams that I have to go back fifty years to find similarity.

Nicole Kidman (This and "Moulin Rouge' in one year? She's a queen!) stars as Grace, a young wife who moves into a creepy old mansion (isn't that always the way) in Jersey at the end of World War 2. As she waits in loneliness for her husband to come back, she takes care of her horribly afflicted children, who are so sensitive to light that daylight will kill them. A stately woman, she has everything in the right place and has devised an ingenious order for her children to follow for their own safety; close all doors and curtains, lock all doors behind you before opening another, etc. So when her two little angels start telling her of "the other people" who live in the house, this good Christian woman is unable to fathom the strange occurences that follow.

That's all I'm saying about the plot. Don't listen to what anyone else has to say.

I'm not going to go on any further. I feel that my opinion of this film is irrelevant, and that the best way I can make you see this film is if I make you intrigued enough to go.

So go now... because I'm a well-adjusted lad of 19, and I couldn't get this film out of my head for days. And after you see this film, you won't look at a picture of a sleeping person the same way again. I hope that's stirred up enough intrigue...

Luca "Now scared of the dark" Brasi