A triumph of style and substance.

Rating: Null/10 (27 August 1999)

The Sixth Sense	-	***
Bruce Willis plays Dr. Malcolm Crowe, a gifted child psychologist down on his luck following the tragic suicide of a former patient. Dispirited, the good doctor finds himself burnt out and emotionally distant from his wife Anna (Olivia Williams.) Then along comes young Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment,) an eight-year-old boy clearly struggling with inner demons. Cole's mother Lynn (Toni Collette) is having difficulty enough raising the boy on her own. It does not help that the child is shy, sullen, and prone to sudden fits of unexplained panic. Grasping for redemption, Dr. Crowe treats the troubled lad, eventually befriending him. For only when Crowe earns Cole's trust can the boy fully explain his secret. It would be wrong of me to divulge anything further. The rest of the movie's secrets I shall leave for you to discover.
The Sixth Sense is a triumph of tone and ambiance. It manages to startle us, to make us grab the forearm of the person at our side, and to gasp at strategic moments. With the aid of cinematographer Tak Fujimoto (The Silence of the Lambs), director M. Night Shyamalan infuses every shot with dread and foreboding. In short, it is a highly successful thriller. Yet its most impressive accomplishment is that it does not skimp on drama. The movie is populated with three-dimensional characters that behave in real and honest ways. Take Toni Collette as the boy's mother. In a standard thriller, this character would be a throw-away, serving no purpose other than to complain to her son and disbelieve him at crucial points. But in The Sixth Sense, the mother is a concerned parent who is struggling to put food on the table and maintain her own sanity, much less the sanity of her son. She is a living, breathing person with strengths and weaknesses. As a result, we empathize with her. The same holds true for all of the supporting players, including the Doctor's neglected wife.
The heart of the movie lies is the burgeoning friendship between Willis and Osment. It works wonderfully, thanks in large part to Osment's outstanding performance. Not since Radio Flyer and E.T. have I been so impressed with a young actor's abilities. When the boy is in the throes of a panic attack, you feel it. When he warily backs away from Dr. Crowe during their first meeting, you feel his hesitation as if it were your own. By his own standards, Bruce Willis turns in a relatively strong performance. It may lack the emotion of In Country and the flair of Death Becomes Her, but it is certainly two notches above his typical action work, such as his role in Striking Distance. One element that I found lacking for much of the film was the relationship between Crowe and his wife. Their estrangement seemed arbitrary, more a result of screenwriting necessity than of real life problems. By the picture's conclusion, however, this plot line was sewn up nicely.
The film has a unique conclusion, which will have viewers discussing it in the lobby, in the car on the way home, and around the water cooler the next day. Some will love the ending. Most will be surprised by it, but some will not. I have mixed feelings in that while I found the final revelation to be intriguing, I wonder if it throws off the movie's delicate balance, sending it into standard thriller territory. The conclusion is not gimmicky, yet it is startling. The Sixth Sense is such a sincere and honest film that I question whether it needed that final twist. Oh, and I also saw it coming from a mile away.