A taut excercise in directorial discipline...truly thrilling.

Rating: 9/10 (8 August 1999)

This is that rarity in American Popular film, a true director's picture. M. Night Shyamalan wrote and directed The Sixth Sense, and it is so carefully constructed in every respect that it creates a world with its own natural laws, in the way that Hitchcock's or Ford's films do.
Every cast member is in perfect tune with the director's mission here. Bruce Willis, Toni Collette and Olivia Williams play each role beautifully, in service to Shyamalan's story. Haley Joel Osment, as the psychic child Cole, and Donnie Wahlberg, as a homicidal psychotic, deliver two of the years' most powerful performances.
This is another of those films about which the less said about plot, the better. Suffice to say there are thrills and chills but no gratuitous violence of any kind.
This may be one of the least melodramatic "ghost" pictures in the history of cinema. In tone, it's closer to a movie like "Little Man Tate" than to other horror films which feature children, such as "The Shining" or "Poltergiest". And that subtlety is much to the credit of the director, from whom I'll be looking for great things in the future.
PKL