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Review by Susan Granger
3½ stars out of 4
It's very important that you be in your seat for the
beginning of this psychological thriller and stay all the way through
to the end to comprehend the nuances of the twisting plot. Bruce
Willis plays a renown child psychologist who is emotionally torn
between spending time with his lovely wife (Olivia Williams) and
helping desperately needy eight year-old named Cole (Haley Joel
Osment), who is haunted by dark visions that terrify him. He sees dead
people, restless spirits. These eerie ghosts appear everywhere - at
home, at school, on the street - and they reach out, trying to
communicate. Often they actually wound him. Cole lives with his
stressed-out single mother (Toni Collette), who is empathetic, but he
is terrified to tell her his secret, to reveal his unexplainable
paranormal powers. Then Willis comes on the scene. Slowly, the young
boy opens up to him. A trust develops, as the psychologist wrestles
with how the fragile child can cope with the harrowing, unresolved
problems that surround him. Philadelphia-based, 28 year-old
writer/director M. Night Shyamalan ("Wide Awake") and cinematographer
Tak Fujimoto ("The Silence of the Lambs") create an intriguing,
elliptical visual style, building a melancholy aura of suspense and
creating a tense, slowly building menace. Combining his spiritual and
mystical Indian roots with his American upbringing, Shyamalan achieves
a subdued, provocative balance between what's real and what's
imagined. Bruce Willis drives the story with a strong, poignant
performance but it's Haley Joel Osment whose talent is an
amazement. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "The Sixth Sense" is
an ominous, unsettling, subtle 9. Only after the film's chilling
conclusion will you be able to fit the pieces of this ingenious
supernatural puzzle together.
Copyright © 2000 Susan Granger
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out of 4
