Nicole Kidman has been a massive name in Hollywood for decades, working with industry legends like Stanley Kubrick and Lars von Trier. While sitting with The Guardian, the Oscar-winning actress answered Reese Witherspoon’s question regarding what overlooked character she would like to revisit:
Actually the character I would love to go back to is the character in The Others [the 2001 gothic horror directed by Alejandro Amenábar], Grace. Because I feel like The Others gets overlooked and I loved that character.
The Others is the seminal horror movie of the early 2000s that got overlooked when compared to other contemporary genre hits like The Sixth Sense.
The Others Is Nicole Kidman’s Signature Horror Role
The Others is a brooding, atmospheric horror film that tells a period story where Grace Stewart (Kidman) lives in a remote manor with her two children, Anne and Nicholas. Both children suffer from a severe sensitivity to sunlight, prompting Grace to keep the house perpetually dark.
The Others is so much more than a scary movie. It’s a deeply moving story about life & death, parenthood, and paranoia. Nicole Kidman gives one of her all-time powerhouse performances, one that might have received an Oscar nomination if Moulin Rouge hadn’t come out the same year. pic.twitter.com/AvqnuSlaqS
Nicole Kidman delivers an intense and emotional performance of a woman driven to insanity after the arrival of three servants and their shenanigans. The supernatural occurrences in the house go beyond jump scares, with the camerawork bringing out Kidman’s performance as a nuanced character who wants to protect her children.
While Kidman has appeared in several thrillers and horror-adjacent films over the years, such as Stoker (2013), The Invasion (2007), and Dead Calm (1989), The Others remains her signature horror role. Her performance earned multiple award nominations, including her fifth Golden Globe nomination, with critics calling her performance one of her career bests.
The Others’ Plot Remains One of the Greatest Horror Twists
The Others, to this day, is celebrated for its horror storytelling, which builds up to a mind-bending twist at the end of the film. Here are key details about the movie.
Viewers were led to believe that the mother and her children were being haunted by ghosts throughout the film, but in an epic finale, we find out that Grace, her children, and the servants are themselves the ghosts haunting their own home.
Each plot point and minor occurrences can be logically traced back to the plot twist, making sense, resulting in a devastating ending where we realise Grace killed her children in a moment of psychological breakdown and then took her own life. The movie is a character study of post-war trauma and guilt, as Grace’s husband died in WWII.
The Others with Nicole Kidman.. That plot twist pic.twitter.com/VHmpUZy7Pv
Critics and fans of good stories have held the movie in high regard, calling it one of the most effective uses of the genre that The Sixth Sense had laid out. Nicole Kidman continued to deliver great performances in all genres of movies, with this one being a career-defining role.
What did you think of The Others? Let us know in the comments.
The Others is currently streaming on AMC+ and Shudder in the U.S.
