The Others

Alejandro Amenábar spends the first half teaching a household protocol rather than frightening anyone: drawn curtains, a system of keys, no door opened until the one behind it is shut. That stretch is the groundwork: the ending turns on who those rules were really for. The second engine is the catechism Grace gives her children; the limbo argument is why she cannot accept what she is shown. The house is kept shut against light, so the threat is off screen sound and nothing bleeds. Set on Jersey, it was shot in Spain, at the Palacio de los Hornillos in Las Fraguas, Cantabria. Amenábar wrote, directed and scored it himself, as with his short films, and said the job frightened him: he had never worked with children. Nicole Kidman walked away during rehearsals when the idea of Grace killing her children gave her nightmares; the team talked her back. Tom Cruise sought to produce after reading the script. Made for seventeen million dollars, it won eight Goyas from fifteen nominations, the first Best Film Goya for a picture with no Spanish in it. A good fit if you accept curtains and a key protocol filling the first half as groundwork for the close. Not a fit if the catechism and limbo argument feel like filler; the ending sits on them.