a review by Jeffrey Overstreet
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If only more scary movies were as worthwhile, thoughtful, and even meaningful as M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense.
These days, most horror films and thrillers are like electroshock treatment, and audiences, eager for new sensations — any sensations at all — line up to have wires applied to their heads. We jump and shriek, growing more and more desensitized all the time, and having nothing worth remembering after the film is over.
But The Sixth Sense is good old fashioned storytelling of the creepiest kind. Its shocks are not gratuitous, and the movie is not intended to send us home scared of the dark. It’s all working together in a way that will inspire some viewers to reflect on their lives.
Shyamalan is a director to watch. He does not seem to need digital animation or rapid-cut editing to hold our attention. He understands that a subtle hint of music and patient camerawork can keep an audience riveted. He scares us with questions about what might happen, instead of jarring us with grotesque imagery. Sure, it’s slow moving, but as another critic said… “the slower the buildup, the greater the payoff.”
The highest honors go to Haley Joel Osment who plays Cole Sear, a young boy who is either gifted or cursed, depending on how you look at it. He’s haunted by visions of the dead, testing his mother’s patience with his wide-eyed, trembling questions. Osment gives a performance that ranks right up there with the best young performances of all-time. He’s utterly convincing, drawing us into sympathy as we catch glimpses of his living nightmare.
But Bruce Willis’s performance should not be overlooked either. As Dr. Malcolm Crowe, a celebrated child psychologist who tries to help Cole cope with his burden, Willis casts off all of the machismo and sarcasm we’ve come to expect from him. There’s a new gentleness and restraint here that convinces us of his thoughtfulness. His hushed conversations with Osment draw us in. Even more admirably, Willis does something he’s never done before — he steps aside and lets Osment be the center of the film. As with his work in Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys, Willis is proving himself as a leading man with remarkable range.
Toni Collette’s performance as Lynn, Cole’s frustrated, divorced mother, is touching and sincere where it might have been just shrill. Lynn’s relationship with Cole is completely convincing, and we can sympathize with her frustrations and doubt.
That’s another virtue of Shyamalan’s approach to a ghost story: He does not need to introduce a human villain. He causes us to care about all of his characters, no matter how intensely they disagree about what is really going on in young Cole’s troubled mind. He treats this story, which so easily could have been a disposable thriller, as if these people are real… as if what they’re experiencing really matters.
The script is so cleverly constructed that very few will anticipate the surprises of the film’s last half hour.
But the film is about so much more than its now-famous twist ending. It’s about loss, grieving, and the importance of listening… really listening… to each other. The film’s most arresting aspect is the fact that we can tell it’s personal, and that the storyteller has a passion to convey something valuable.
Shyamalan is clearly a student of the Spielberg school of filmmaking, but he has chosen wisely in giving cinematographer Tak Fujimoto the chance to frame his scenes. Fujimoto, who filmed Silence of the Lambs, brings a great deal to the project, finding just enough shadow, just enough texture to enhance the creepiness of Cole’s ghostly reality.
The Sixth Sense will convince you that spooky movies can be exciting, chilling, mysterious, and rewarding, while all other recent evidence points the other way.
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Writer-director M. Night Shyamalan
Director of photography – Tak Fujimoto
Editor – Andrew Mondshein
Music – James Newton Howard
Production designer – Larry Fulton
Producers – Frank Marshall, Kathleen Kennedy and Barry Mendel
Hollywood Pictures/Spyglass Entertainment. 107 minutes. Rated PG-13.
STARRING: Bruce Willis (Malcolm Crowe), Haley Joel Osment (Cole Sear), Toni Collette (Lynn Sear), Olivia Williams (Anna Crowe), Trevor Morgan (Tommy Tammisimo) and Donnie Wahlberg (Vincent Gray).