Gorgeous Goth

>> Nicole Kidman shines in ghoulish The Others

by JOANNE LATIMER

Nicole Kidman is astonishingly beautiful in The Others, but she's no one you'd want to hang out with. She's high-strung, suspicious and full of moral rectitude. This is what happens when you're afraid to live in your own mansion.

The Others is a good old-fashioned ghost story. Set in the final days of World War II, on the secluded isle of Jersey, the film is a decent psychological thriller that understands the scare factor of long corridors. Director Alejandro Amenabar wrote the story too, and every one of his childhood fears has been deployed to tap into our core cowardice. Despite the film's textbook list of scares--pianos that play by themselves, locked doors that creek open--the film achieves a Gothic tone and style that would well suit Henry James's The Turn of the Screw.

Grace (Kidman) is struggling to make a life with her two children inside this cavernous home, while her husband (Christopher Eccleston) hasn't come back from the war. Her children's allergy to the sun means they must live in near darkness: anything stronger than candlelight will cause the kids to break out in boils and then asphyxiate. Well, that's what Grace tells the new servants who show up at her door, after the old staff left in the middle of the night.

Grace locks doors behind her as she exits to keep out ambient sunlight. The three new servants scramble to draw all the drapes when the children pass through rooms, then scramble to lock the doors behind them. Grace is a stern taskmaster and Bible-thumper who doesn't take kindly to her little girl's "nonsense" about ghosts in the house. The Others takes a few swings at the Bible, with Grace acting like the blind-faith moron. She punishes her children by making them memorize bible passages, then scares them by explaining that bad kids go to children's limbo when they die.

Grace's husband stumbles home from the war, in the fog, just as the ghosts in the attic start making their play for the house. Don't expect any blood and guts at the end, but you do get a tidy plot twist with Gothic appeal.

The Others opens Friday, Aug. 10