I'll confess, I'm not too keen on ghost stories. Nevertheless, I had heard reasonable reviews of The Others, so I thought it was worth looking out for. I'm quite glad I did. Now, for the sake of people who havn't seen it, this review is going to have something in it which might be considered a spoiler, so you may prefer to stop reading now if you want to fully enjoy the film
First, I'll commend the acting - two children, both of whom managed to act well. A nicely deranged Nichole Kidman, and some good (if somewhat generic) tactiturn strangers. They all fitted together well. The dialoge was a little wooden. I've yet to decide whether it was intentional, but there was something a little unnatural about how the characters spoke. I'll let it pass, but it grate slightly.
And now the spoiler. The film has a twist. Its a good twist, but I figured out what it was going to be after about 10 minutes. I'm not going to say the twist was easy to spot, because the person I went to see the film with didn't notice it, but it does mean we watched very different films. Nevertheless it was still enjoyable, even if a few times I had to restrain myself from shouting "Can't you see whats going on, you idiots" at the characters. Its impressive when a film can be entertaining even if you know whats going on (a bit like watching Columbo, I suppose.).
There are a cuple of fun scenes where everyone in the cinema jumps - one near the end in particular. It isn't anything like the exercise regime "What lies beneath" was, in this respect, but I wouldn't go and watch it if you had a heart condition.
I think, overall it was a competent film, enjoyable and quite high quality, but nothing special. So a generous 4 twists in the tale out of a possible 5 seems reasonable.