THE SIXTH SENSE (1999) Directed by M. Night Shyamalan Review © 1999 Scott J. Promish
At the start of THE SIXTH SENSE, Dr. Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis), an award-winning child psychologist, is confronted in his bedroom by an intruder who turns out to be a severely disturbed former patient. The young man, angry that Crowe was unable to help him, shoots him after some ranting and then turns the gun on himself.
Cut to `the next fall.' Crowe's current case is a young boy named Cole (Haley Joel Osment). Cole is a lonely outsider, considered a freak at school. He seems to have hallucinations, and he later confides to Crowe that he sees the ghosts of people who don't know they're dead yet. Crowe throws himself full into his work, determined to make up for his previous failure. In the process, he loses touch with his wife, who has not only stopped speaking to him, but who is having an affair with a coworker.
THE SIXTH SENSE is being marketed as a horror film but it's barely a thriller. There's nothing scary in the film; just a few minor, clumsily-executed gross-outs (LAWN DOGS' Mischa Barton dripping puke; well I guess if she suddenly appeared in my bedroom like that I'd be frightened too.) Worse, nothing happens to move the story forward. The characters are bores and there is no development in themselves or in their relationships with each other. The picture is drab and dull, both visually and because of the flat performances.
Having grown up on ‘The Twilight Zone' and ‘Alfred Hitchcock Presents', I've always been fond of twist endings, and the one that caps off THE SIXTH SENSE is good if not completely new. But it fails to be the revelation it should have been. By the time it arrived I was so numb from the rest of the picture that it had almost no impact. What's more, it offers no resolution to the main story of the film. No one is better or worse off than they were at the start. For a film that felt so long to sit through, it's a frustrating disappointment.
[Review written 8/7/99]
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