Captured the essence of the "altered place"

Rating: 9/10 (23 August 2002)

There are certain places in this world (you know the ones I mean, for you have all seen them), that though they might appear perfectly normal in every way, are somehow... different. They may be a street near your house, or a disused park behind your office. They may only take on this difference at a certain time of day, or perhaps only you see it. But that difference, that altered state, manifests itself in, to use Cole's phrase, the prickly things on the back of your neck. These are the kinds of places in which you feel compelled to whisper, even when outdoors, and that make you feel you are not alone, even when you are. Somewhere, inside these places, you feel, other worlds must exist.
For me, the greatest achievement of "The Sixth Sense" was not its well-constructed plot or its twist ending; both of these lose their punch on repeat viewings, but rather its masterful evocation of that sense of otherness, as if it had managed to turn the entire city of Philadelphia into an "altered place." In the main the man responsible for this is Tak Fujimoto, Shyamalan's cinamatographer, who shot "The Silence of the Lambs." His shots are both hyperrealistic and dark, mixing shade with sudden bursts of colour, creating a feeling of a world decidedly different from our own. Credit must also go to James Newton Howard, whose elegant, beautiful and creepy score was kept almost subliminal, leaving over its notes a wall of silence that ways down on the heart.
"The Sixth Sense" is of course, Shyamalan's film, but it was those two who made it immortal.