Coy, but too Reminiscent of 'Sense'

Rating: Null/10 (15 August 2001)

I should have been more analytical. I consider myself somewhat of a legitimate critic. However, I never start taking the movie apart until after the fact. Perhaps that's beneficial, in that I always enjoy movies more while watching them. But then again, I feel like a fool when I totally love a movie and then it hits me as I walk out of the theater, "That was just like another movie I saw!" So was the case with me when I saw "The Others." It was a very nicely made and fun movie. I don't know if I can recall a movie where the audience was more into it than it was with this movie. Perhaps there was even more audience surprise and interaction than there was with "Sixth Sense." And that's where the comparison comes in. Though the "others" had that rather genius touch of the lighting to it, I can't escape how similar to "Sixth Sense" it was. Except for the difference in story line and the fact that the dead people could only SOMETIMES see the living, it was just another case of the leads actually being dead people the whole time, not realizing it until the end and "only seeing what they wanted to see" until that final realization. There was the brilliant(in my opinion) stroke of having Anne actually "possess" the old woman. The way they did that scene was great. However, in the grand scheme of things, I feel like "The Others" was more of an "other era" adaptation of Shyamalan's masterpiece than it was an original work. Though I will always enjoy "The Others", it will never be an equal with "Sixth Sense" in my mind.