The Others

Alejandro Amenábar's The Others (2001) is a rare thing — a genuinely chilling supernatural film built almost entirely on atmosphere, restraint and suggestion. A Spanish-led production shot in English, it swept the Goya Awards, taking Best Film and Best Director, and became one of the most successful Spanish films ever made.

Nicole Kidman gives one of her finest performances as Grace, the rigid, fearful mother sealing her photosensitive children inside a perpetually darkened mansion on postwar Jersey. Amenábar, who also composed the spare score, generates dread through candlelight, fog and silence rather than shock, drawing on the tradition of the classic ghost story — Henry James's The Turn of the Screw chief among its forebears — to tighten the screws with exquisite patience.

The film became famous for its construction and its much-discussed ending, which sent audiences back to reconsider everything they had seen; it stands among the most elegantly engineered of modern genre films. Its influence on the slow-burn, twist-driven horror revival of the 2000s is considerable. Restrained, beautifully crafted and deeply unsettling, The Others proves that the oldest tools of the ghost story — shadow, suggestion and a house full of secrets — remain the most effective. Its meticulous construction and its faith in suggestion over shock helped revive the literate ghost story, influencing the slow-burn horror that followed.