The Others is the quietest movie you'll see this year.

It's so quiet that I feel like I should be describing it in a smaller font.

But the silence is good. It builds a foreboding ambiance. You don't need a ghoul to leap screaming out of every orifice in your movie for it to be scary.

Silence builds suspense. Silence makes your mind start to sketch in the details that it's not being fed, which is often scarier than anything that a filmmaker can put on the screen. Silence is the seed of nightmares.

Unfortunately, a crowed movie theater audience can destroy a cinematic silence like a handful of grenades stuffed inside of a live chicken.

I swear, when I went to see this movie last night, I was surrounded by at least six sets of Marlon Wayans.

As if that wasn't enough, more phone calls came in to people in my theater during the movie than have come in to people in my office all week.

Nicole Kidman: As you can see, the housework has been neglected since the servants disappeared almost a week ago.

Marlon Wayans: Uuuuhh huuh. Daaaaamn. Yo house nasty, bitch.

Creepy Old Lady: You mean they just... vanished?

Another Marlon Wayans: Awwwwww SHIT! Oh no you didn't EVEN! *brrriiiiing!* What? Nigga, why you callin' while I be up in watchin a FILM? Nigga ain't got no respect!

Nicole Kidman: ... into thin air.

Yet another Marlon Wayans: Ahahaha! Shit dawg, you best get out! Get the fuck out 'afore dat shit goes down, mutha fucka.

So perhaps I wasn't as frightened by The Others as I could have been.

Still, it's a creepy movie.

A creepy... long... movie.

I admit it. I looked at my watch about an hour and fifteen minutes in. Considering that by that time I should have been fully entwined in the bone chilling suspense of the story, I guess the whole thing just didn't work out for me.

That is not to say that it isn't bewitching. It just isn't bewitching when you're watching it from the middle of an In Living Color skit.

The film takes place in "Jersey - Channel Islands" in the 1940s. I spent the whole movie thinking how it was total bullshit that everybody spoke with an English accent. I mean, come on, making everybody use a funny accent to show that it's a different time period is like something a crappy community theatre group would do. Trust me, I've done crappy community theatre.

And then there's that part where Nicole Kidman is like "I've kept this house free of Nazis for five years! I'll be damned if some ghosts are gonna take it from me now!" I was like "Oooh, you kept the Nazis out of your house in Newark. Big accomplishment, Rosie the Riveter."

Of course, when I brought this up to my girlfriend later, she explained, with her head buried in her hands in frustration, that the movie didn't take place in "New Jersey" but in "Jersey." Apparently this "Old Jersey" is actually in England. Well, hey. You learn something new every day.

You know what else I've learned? Nicole Kidman is very pretty. Okay, so maybe I'm a little behind the times on that one, as apparently People Magazine does a story on how pretty she is about every three months.

I haven't exactly been keeping tabs on Nicole though. The last movie that I saw her in was To Die For six years ago, at which point I swore I would never pay to see another one of her movies again.

Now look what I've been missing out on! Apparently she's not just "that girl who was married to the gay guy who is in that movie that I was glad she got killed at the end of" anymore. She's all grown up, divorced from the gay guy, and she looks darn swell in a 1940s, wool-and-hair-bob kind of way.

I'd ask her to the prom if it wasn't for those kids of hers. Those ghastly, nightmarish, pasty white children.

You see, Nicole's children suffer from acute photosensitivity, and as Nicole explains, to paraphrase, that if even a single sunbeam falls upon them that they will burst into flames and explode like the vampires at the end of From Dusk Till Dawn.

As such, there are strict rules about the usage of the doors and curtains. All closed, all the time, Anne Frank style. No light is allowed to enter the house anywhere near the children, ever, for their own safety.

But you start to wonder after a while. Is the sunlight really such a danger to the children? That sounds as far fetched as Joe Banks's braincloud. What's really going on here? I'll bet that the writer was just trying to find an excuse to make every scene dark and candlelight-creepy.

"Um, yeah, the kids are... scared of the light! No... that's stupid. Kids are scared of the dark. Okay then, how about allergic to the light! Yeah, that's the stuff!"

Anyhoo, pretty Nicole's house has... a presence. A creeping, thumping unknown. Is it a ghost? Is it a threat? When it's underwater, does it get wet? We don't know. We don't know anything. Does it have to do with the children? With their UV-minus-one-million skin pigment? Are the spooky servants in on it? We don't know! Dear God, we don't know!

All we know is that there is something in the house. Something not of this world. Something that grips us by primitive strings of dread through our very hearts, and slowly but firmly tugs us in, like a grizzled, black slickered fisherman on a gray morning, dragging a fish to its gasping, suffocating death...

Nicole Kidman: There were voices. A boy and two women, and they were talking together!

Marlon Wayans: Oooohhhhh! Dat shit is WACK!

Creepy Girl Kid: Mommy look! (Showing eerie little kid drawing of a family with numbers by their heads.) This is the father, this is the mother, this is Victor, and this is the old woman.

Marlon Wayans Jr.: Girlfriend, you best be getting' out dat house! GO girl!

Nicole Kidman: What do these numbers stand for?

Marlon Wayans III: *briiing!* What? S'up dawg. Shit, I be watchin' this fine bitch not getting' her skinny white ass out da damn house!

Creepy Girl Kid: That's the number of times that I've seen them.

Marlon Wayans the Elder: Damn, yo. I ain't seen my own shortie dat many times.

So let's review then. The Others is quiet, doesn't take place in New Jersey, and stars a pretty Nicole Kidman and her pulpy white kids.

Yeah, I guess I don't have a whole lot to say about The Others that I can divulge outside the spoiler section. If you've already seen the movie, or you want to see it but not enjoy it in any way, come on down and hear me rant.

For the rest of you, I recommend seeing The Others in private if possible, unless of course you actually are Marlon Wayans.

I liked this movie better the first time I saw it when it was called "I see dead people."

Man! Do I feel stupid! I picture Dimension Films with tears running down their collective cheeks, clutching their stomach and chortling, "They're all dead, and they don't know it! HAhahaha! Oh! Oh you! Hahaha! You guys fall for this every time! You're so gullible! Fished in! Fished in!"

I mean, what the hell. Just because I didn't see the whole "all the living people are really dead and all the dead people are really living" switcheroo coming doesn't mean that it wasn't gonna make me think immediately of The Sixth Sense when it did.

I wouldn't say it was "ripped off" per say, but, I mean, come on. "They only see what they want to see. They don't know that they're dead." Right on, Haley.

Ah well. That explains why the fog closed in and forced Nicole back to the house when she tried to go to the village. Kind of.

According to my schooling in the occult, when a spirit attempts to leave the house in which it is contained, it finds itself in an endless desert full of striped sandworms that want to eat it. Do your research next time, Alejandro Amenabar.

The return of Nicole's husband (who had been killed in the war) just goes to show that true love overcomes all barriers, even that of everybody being dead. Well... let me rephrase that... Wanting to be creepy and have sex with your pretty dead wife one last time overcomes all barriers, even that of everybody being dead.

I mean, really. What the hell was he doing in this movie anyway? He was kind of disturbing and all, but what purpose did he serve? Sure he added a gratuitous sex scene, but said sex scene didn't actually appear in the film. Does it count as necrophilia if both parties are dead? I guess that's territory that the MPAA didn't want to explore.