A horror film that transcends the genre, with a stunning ending

Rating: 10/10 (9 August 1999)

A wonderful horror/suspense film that transcends the genre. How often does a movie come out that takes a long-established and even cliched genre and turn it on its ear? I can think of only a few in the last two decades, including "Pulp Fiction" which changed how we look at crime films and "Die Hard" which did the same for action films. Well, "The Sixth Sense" is one of these rare movies, and it will change how you look at ghost stories forever. (And, interestingly enough, Bruce Willis is in all three of these films! Weird, huh?) I won't reveal much of the plot here, since the less you know about the film going in, the better. But I will say that it involves ghosts; the film has a clearly defined idea of what a ghost is, exactly, and that idea is crucial to the plot of the film... which involves the relationship between a child psychologist (Willis) and a little boy who has a very big problem. "The Sixth Sense" is slowly and deliberately paced (though never boring), is filled with both heart-breaking moments and knowing humor, reveals plot through character development and subtle directing instead of through heavy-handed manipulation of the audience like most horror films, and manages to horrify without dumb "shock"-moments and a minimum of gore. The acting by everyone here is uniformly superb, especially by Haley Joel Osment, a child-actor who plays the main character and who is dead-on perfect in scene after scene after scene. The quiet moments between him and an equally superb Bruce Willis are beautifully written, funny, sad, quirky and original. And the movie builds to an incredible ending that will leave your head spinning, guaranteed. A true classic.