IT'S been quite a year for Nicole Kidman.

Her very public divorce from Tom Cruise has doubtless left deep mental scars.

But this has been eased considerably by her film work. Audiences are still flocking to see Kidman strut her stuff in the crowd-pleasing Moulin Rouge.

And hot on the heels of that comes The Others, a film about as close in tone to Moulin Rouge as the height difference between the actress and her ex.

The Others is a good old fashioned ghost story. Kidman plays Grace, a woman living in a large, fog-shrouded old house on the island of Jersey during the final days of World War Two.

Her husband is missing in action and she shares the house with her two children, Anne and Nicholas (Alakina Mann and James Bentley), and the three servants (Fionnula Flanagan, Eric Sykes and Elaine Cassidy) who turn up out of the blue (or should that be grey?) when the previous help left under mysterious circumstances.

It is a strange household, and things take an even more sinister turn after the arrival of the servants, when Grace hears banging and whispering in upstairs rooms. A mystery pianist seems to be at large, and the children insist they have seen another boy in the house.

The film has a sense of unease and mystery from the start and, despite using every cliche in the book, will soon have the hairs standing up on the back of your neck.

Something very odd is going on in this house and the audience is invited to guess what it is. And while the twist at the end isn't of the slap-in-the-face variety (as with The Sixth Sense, for example), it is nevertheless satisfying as it enables missing parts of the jigsaw to fall in place.

Kidman is superb as the troubled, repressed mother. She gives a fine performance as a woman struggling to keep control of her life, but who is in fact teetering on the brink of madness.

She gets excellent support from Flanagan and the two extraordinary child actors.

Despite only having a 12 certificate, The Others is creepy enough to make its audience wary of the long winter nights ahead.

And any film that has Nicole Kidman sharing scenes with Eric Sykes has got to be worth a look.

Rating: 8 out of 10