"The Sixth Sense" The First Disappointment

Rating: 5/10 (10 November 2017)

"The Sixth Sense" is the story of a boy and his relationship with the counselor that he has been seeing. The boy is troubled because of the visions he sees of dead people. The psychologist is trying to help the boy but to no avail. After the boy is able to help the ghosts he sees pass on it is revealed that the psychologist is also dead. The boy then helps that ghost move on as well. Nowadays when people talk about M. Night Shyamalan there is an air of disappointment that always seems to be present. His recent movies have not been received well, for good reason. But why aren't they good? The one consistency that appears throughout his movies is his style of storytelling. "The Sixth Sense" benefited greatly from his model, as it was his debut into the film industry and it might'v felt fresh as M. Night was rather unknown. Pinning "The Sixth Sense" as anything other than M. Night's first in a series of mediocre movies would be (in my opinion) dishonest. The only redeeming quality about this film is Haley Joel Osment's performance, and I would not accredit that to M. Night's directing skills considering his later works ("The Happening", "The Last Airbender"). Everything else about the movie is told in the M. Night style I have grown to resent. All of the qualities he is criticized for today are present in this movie, had this movie come out today it would not be received nearly as well.