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| Directed by M. Night Shyamalan; Starring Bruce Willis, Haley Joel Osment, Toni Collette, Olivia Williams, Donnie Wahlberg, Mischa Barton, and Trevor Morgan |
Advertised as a tense thriller with horror film tendencies, The Sixth Sense is much more a drama. It does have some spots that are strategically made to scare the audience, but none of those moments work. The Sixth Sense doesn’t even have spooky moments like The Blair Witch Project or even tongue in cheek horror like Idle Hands. For the most part, the film attempts to startle you by having someone, that you should predict is a dead person, walk by the camera…dead. In fact it came off to me as an episode of The Twilight Zone mixed with Wide Awake. The Wide Awake thing is understandable since this is from the same director, giving reason for the sappiness of the films ending.
The Sixth Sense follows the attempts of child psychologist Malcolm Crowe (Willis) to understand the acute schizophrenia of 11 year old Cole Sear (Osment). It seems that Cole believes that he sees dead people walking around unaware of the fact that they are dead. This is causing problems for both of them as Cole’s single mother Lynn (Collette) is terribly worried about him and Malcolm’s wife Anna (Williams) feels without her husband as he spends all his time with Cole. Cole’s case is of great importance to Malcolm since he sees his one failure as a doctor in a case that was almost exactly the same (which lead to the intrusion of this ex-patient early in the film).
The Sixth Sense does succeed well in drama, but all of its comedy and suspense turns out rather flat. I liked Willis in this as well as Collette and Williams (though not their finest work), but the real acting ability here is in Osment. His performance is above anything from a preteen this year and arguably the best supporting role of the year. I’d go as far as saying that he and Mason Gamble are the only young actors that can act (I’d draw the line at about 15 because then you’re getting into Jason Schwartzman and Ben Silverstone territory). The direction by Shyamalan is good, though at times I though that it was trying too hard to be catchy (plus it was in dire need of a steadycam). I also liked the cinematography from Jonathan Demme mainstay Tak Fujimoto. My only real big complaint is in the ending. I did like the little surprise that comes at the climax, but I truly hated the sappiness that the film went into in the final moments. I thought that maybe they had accidentally let Tom Shadyac or Joe Johnston take over the finale. Still it is a worthwhile film to see, despite being highly flawed.
