The Others (2002)

What's the difference between suspense and horror? One is sensing, the other is seeing; one is expectation, the other is follow-through; one leaves the bloody details to your imagination, the other shows that imagination can fall pitifully short. The Others, as directed by Spain's Alejandro Amenábar, is decidedly the former, hearkening back to elegant, dark-and-stormy Hollywood ghost stories like ''The Uninvited'': Nicole Kidman, wound tighter than 20-weight fishing line, hides her two pale children from the light and from whatever is bumping around in the darkness of her ancient mansion. The climactic twist isn't the point so much as the getting there: Slow (maybe too slow for viewers with TV-fed metabolisms and other modern conditions) and inexorable, ''The Others'' plays out like a particularly unnerving campfire tale.