Deborah Kerr (in the performance of her career) plays the emotionally repressed vicar's daughter who takes up a job as a governess to two seemingly angelic orphans. Gradually coming to believe that the children are possessed by the perverse spirits of their former governess and her sadistic lover, she begins to see manifestations of the ghosts prowling the huge gothic mansion of Bly House.

Director Jack Clayton sustains a superbly haunting atmosphere throughout the film, and like James' original work, cleverly retains the ambiguity of wether the ghosts are real or the products of the governess's fevered imagination. Aided by Freddie Francis's exquisitely inventive and atmospheric CinemaScope photography, we, like the governess, are never quite sure what unspoken horrors are lurking beyond the edge of the frame and are kept guessing until the film's tragic conclusion.