About the `surprise' ...

Rating: 8/10 (26 March 2000)

... I'm afraid I got it almost immediately - that is to say, about a third of the way through. I mean, Shyamalan drops us a pretty broad hint. I wonder if he even intended to keep the secret hidden. I have a suspicion... I think that Shyamalan's intention was to reveal the secret at precisely the moment I worked it out, possibly by dropping an even broader hint. But then someone at some preliminary screening failed to get the hint, and Shyamalan thought: `Well, if it's THAT easy to keep people in the dark ...'
I'm reminded of `Vertigo', where Hitchcock does something similar: he makes his revelation less than half way through, as soon as he decently can (to the audience, of course; not to the central character). It must be said that this makes `Vertigo' a better, tenser film. An explicit revelation halfway through would have likewise made `The Sixth Sense' a better, tenser film; so I'm GLAD I worked things out early on - a friend of mine who didn't found the story a little humdrum, before the conclusion.
I don't know that I would have had THAT reaction: even given Shyamalan's miscalculation, this is a beautifully told tale, supported by three perfectly judged performances (Bruce Willis, Haley Joel Osment, who proves that it IS possible for an adult story to have a likeable child as a central character, and Toni Collette - but I'm always ready to rave about her, wherever she appears). The criticism that the ghosts intrude on what could have been a good domestic drama is entirely misguided. This is a story ABOUT ghosts intruding. I found it refreshing to see a fantasy that takes its fantastic premise seriously, without using it as an excuse to cheapen the drama.
The sober photography helps a good deal, without drawing attention to itself. A pity that one of the shots was so obviously swiped from `Poltergeist'. Not that I minded - this is a much better film than `Poltergeist', anyway.