Metacritic reviews

Mulligan knows how to lead us up and down the garden paths of his bucolic world, and as with Psycho you need a second viewing to appreciate the various skills that have gone into this movie.

An outstanding example of topflight writing structure and dialog, enhanced to full fruition by a knowing director.

The Other, which is based on the novel by former actor Tom Tryon (you saw him as The Cardinal), has been criticized in some quarters because Mulligan made it too beautiful, they say, and too nostalgic. Not at all. His colors are rich and deep and dark, chocolatey browns and bloody reds; they aren’t beautiful but perverse and menacing.

Director Robert Mulligan does an excellent job of evoking both the historical period and the terror, aided greatly by Robert Surtees' fine photography. The performances from the Udvarnoky twins are nuanced and memorable. Well worth seeing.

As so often with this director's work, the film is craftsmanlike rather than brilliant, but the performances, Robert Surtees' lush camerawork, and Mulligan's solid psychological insights make for thoughtful, sometimes even chilling, entertainment.

There is a consistency of character, time and place that properly compliments the plotting and is admirable enough to almost - but not quite - make us forgive the loose ends and missing links. [29 May 1972, p.71]

Thomas Tryon, the actor (The Cardinal), wrote the screen adaptation of his best-selling novel, which is in almost every way more precise, more complex and less ambiguous than the "Summer of '35" sort of movie Robert Mulligan has made from it.