Now, watch closely!

Rating: 8/10 (16 January 2008)

This was a delightfully twisted film. As others have said, the mood, acting, staging and script are all right on. The characters are strikingly real, although it would have been so easy to make them just stage characters; even when their behavior is temporarily hard to understand, it is also hard to disbelieve. Where it really excels, however, is inserting an element of science fiction with the other "magic" so smoothly that it does not seem out of place. Most people with whom I have watched the film entirely failed to notice more than one significant plot element, not because what was happening was concealed, but because - well, after all, it's illusion, isn't it? Throughout, and especially by the time you get to the end, you don't expect to really understand. Only when you really think about it and discuss it afterward do you realize that within its own terms, it all hangs together beautifully.
Sometimes a film is so complex and confusing so that people walk out saying "I don't think I get it"; but rarely do they also say "I want to see it again." The Sixth Sense was an exception; this one is even more so.