THE SIXTH SENSE (Hollywood) Starring: Bruce Willis, Haley Joel Osment, Toni Collette, Olivia Williams. Screenplay: M. Night Shyamalan. Producers: Frank Marshall, Kathleen Kennedy and Barry Mendel. Director: M. Night Shyamalan. MPAA Rating: PG-13 (profanity, adult themes, brief nudity) Running Time: 110 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
[Warning: The very nature of this review may involve plot spoilers for viewers who have not yet seen the film.]
Of all the benefits I have received from being a film critic, I may value innocence the most. It may seem an odd choice of words in a profession more often associated with cynicism, but it applies nonetheless. While the onslaught of studio publicity is impossible to avoid completely, the ability to attend press screenings serves as something of a buffer against expectations. It was impossible for me to react to the BLAIR WITCH hype since I had written my review six months before its release; I never needed to guard against becoming aware of key CRYING GAME-esque plot points. It was possible for my viewing experience to remain relative untainted, subject only to pre-conceived notions for which I could have no one but myself to blame.
It took the release of THE SIXTH SENSE for me to realize how much that innocence can matter. After missing the press screening due to scheduling conflicts, I became aware that this story -- Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis), a troubled child psychologist, tries to help even more troubled 9-year-old Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment) with the child's ability to see dead people -- contained a "twist" or "surprise" ending. Reviews and discussions meticulously avoided revealing the specific nature of the ending, but by then the damage had been done. I considered everything I knew about the film, and made an educated guess regarding what would be revealed in its closing moments. Then I finally caught up with the film, and watched with my "can I out-guess the writer" glasses on.
Within twenty minutes, it was obvious that I had guessed correctly.
I'm not going to suggest that it was particularly clever of me to figure it out. I will suggest that I probably wouldn't have been testing my cleverness if I hadn't known there was something to be figured out. The simple knowledge that there was a plot point to be sussed out set me to sussing. And I spent as much of the film nodding to myself at the clues I recognized as I did trying to get caught up in the story.
The nature of the film made such behavior both a blessing and a curse. Writer/director M. Night Shyamalan's pacing is so agonizingly deliberate that I was delighted to have something else on which to train my attention. Conversely, I was able to give Bruce Willis's monotonous performance a bit more benefit of the doubt, and admire the craft which allowed Shyamalan's little trick to seem plausible. The only constant to draw me from my reverie was Osment, a sublimely effective child actor whose performance alone is enough to recommend THE SIXTH SENSE. Children in jeopardy are usually a narrative cheat, but Osment's reactions to his situation are always more compelling than Shyamalan's few moments of thriller gimmickry. The irony is that my connection with Cole's plight was consistently undercut by my awareness that the film's payoff would focus on someone else.
Perhaps my long-standing aversion to physician-heal-thyself psychologist/psychiatrist characters (coincidentally sparked by another Willis film, the ghastly COLOR OF NIGHT) turned me off to Malcolm as an equal player in the story. Perhaps the supernaturally comforting closing shot reminded me too much of GHOST. Perhaps the big emotional moment for Toni Collette (as Cole's mother) felt like a cheat because her character hadn't been developed at all. Or perhaps I never bought the entire arc of Malcolm's story from the outset. It's hard for me to know whether it was the film itself or my constant view of its wires which left me unimpressed.
The success of THE SIXTH SENSE suggests that it has struck an emotional chord in many viewers. For me, the only chords it could strike were technical. There was a not-particularly-inspired gag often used by TITANIC detractors during its theatrical run, something along the lines of "what's the point, you know the boat's going to sink." Most of the time, it's even true. Next time, I hope I don't go into a film knowing whether or not the boat is going to sink.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 sensory perceptions: 6.
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