A great film with THAT twist.

Rating: 10/10 (29 April 2000)

It is all too often the case that a film will come along amidst a blaze of publicity and ultimatly fail to meet expectations. On the other hand once every few years a film will come out with little if any real hype and blow the competition away. In 1999 this film was The Sixth Sense. The premise is really very simple, "boy sees dead people" and were this a typical Hollywood picture this is exactly all you would have. However writer/director M. Night Shymalam brings a fresh approach which opens new possibilities that many others would not have wasted time or valuable budget on. For example, the special effects are kept to a bare minimum, so that when you do see something horrific it is genuinley disturbing unlike some films i.e. The Haunting. As with most films this one must rely on the performance of it's leading man or in this case boy. In this role Haley Joel Osment is a revelation, cue oscar nomination. He has excellent support from a brilliantly understated Bruce Willis and fellow oscar nominee Toni Collette. Finally for those of you who have been living in outer space, this film has a twist in it's tail that turns your whole perspective of the movie upside down, and this is certainly one of the reasons for it's huge box office sucess, (many people were going back to see it again). However I was one of the unlucky ones who had been told the ending in advance, but I have to say it didn't spoil my enjoyment one little bit.