The Sixth Sense (9/10)
The Sixth Sense is an excellent psychological ghost story with a human heart. Bruce Willis plays Malcolm Crowe, a child psychologist trying to understand what's going on in the head of Cole, a disturbed schoolboy. Cole lives with his mother (Toni Collette), and although she senses her son is very different from other boys, and is aware of the strange events that occur around him, she does not understand what is wrong and is frustrated because she cannot help him. Dr. Crowe befriends his young patient and eventually Cole reveals to him his secret - that he sees dead people. Crowe is sympathetic and supportive but does not believe in ghosts. Instead, he thinks Cole is haunted by spooks constructed from his own imagination, and seeks to help Cole by getting him to confront the tormented dead of his visions and find out what they want. We are drawn into Cole's world, seeing what he sees and sharing his fear at these unwanted visions.
As Cole, Haley Joel Osment gives a truly memorable performance, and I don't just mean he's good for a child actor - I mean he's good. "All the time" - it doesn't sound like much of a line, but the way he delivers it makes it creepier than anything the Blair witch could throw at us. M. Night Shyamalan directs his own wonderful script with flair and sensitivity, and Tak Fujimoto's dark but crisp photography contributes the sense of menacing reality it brought to The Silence of The Lambs. As well as being as scary as any ghost movie you're likely to see, the film is very moving in its examination of Cole's relationships with Dr. Crowe, with his mother and, indeed, with the dead and the loved ones they leave behind. Even if you see the twist ending coming, The Sixth Sense is a cracker of a movie and its success shows that Hollywood can make thoughtful popular entertainment and make lots of money at the same time. And that can't be bad.
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Gary Jones
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