The Others

Tension rises on the screen, as I am sure it did off, as Tom Cruise's production company leads his ex-wife through this intense supernatural thriller. Nicole Kidman stars as a lonely housewife with Nurse Ratched-like rigidity caring for her two photosensitive children in a fog-covered secluded mansion while her husband is away fighting for Britain in World War II. After the servants mysteriously disappear, three reticent replacements arrive and relieve the increasingly maddening mother before revealing their own life-altering secret. Imposing an eerily slow pace with scene-stealing performances by the entire cast, writer-director Alejandro Amenabar instills heart-pounding anticipation in this haunting combination of The Shining and Flowers in the Attic with a powerful Sixth Sense-type of ending.