Excellent! Not To Be Missed!

Rating: Null/10 (3 August 1999)

It is an unexpected pleasure to report The Sixth Sense delivers solid performances and intelligent chills.
And it's a Bruce Willis movie to boot.
No, that's not an oxymoron. As child psychologist Dr. Malcolm Crowe, Willis reminds us not only can he act, but that he's capable of subdued, highly nuanced and genuinely emotive performances.
Written and directed by expatriate Indian M. Night Shyamalan (Praying With Anger [1992]; Wide Awake [1998]; and writer of the upcoming Stuart Little), The Sixth Sense is an old-fashioned, understated supernaturally-themed psychological thriller in the Val Lewton tradition. Recovering from the violent trauma of a home invasion by a former patient, Dr. Crowe is struggling to put his life back together when he takes on a new, literally haunted patient, Cole Sear (the impressive Haley Joel Osment, perhaps best remembered as portraying Forrest Junior in Forrest Gump). Withdrawn and mistrusting, seemingly as a result of his parents' divorce, Cole's fears are not the work of an overactive, disturbed imagination as Crowe surmises, but are tangible. Cole sees dead people, spirits who have failed to realize they are ghosts and whom continually relive their last, painful moments. Since his mother (a strong performance by Toni Collette, from Velvet Goldmine and Emma) and everyone else treats him as a freak, Cole is naturally wary of revealing his secret to Crowe, but the developing relationship leads man and boy into new avenues of self-discovery.
To reveal more of The Sixth Sense's plot would do the film a disservice (beware reviews by critics who are notorious for spoilers such as Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman and Lisa Schwarzbaum). Like Dr. Crowe, audiences should approach this movie with an open mind and be prepared to take a slow, measured journey into the unknown. In fact, the film's thoughtful pace may pose a problem for audiences weaned on MTV-paced quick cutting and big budget flash. However, the preview audience with which I saw the movie was composed in part by families with children, and even the hyper-active six year old seated behind me was enthralled by the story. Not one preteen voice was heard throughout the running time, and both parents and kids looked shaken on leaving the theater.
Acknowledgement should also be made to Tak Fujimoto [The Silence of the Lambs] for his discreet cinematography which, by using a muted palate of dark browns, washed out grays, and natural low level lighting, perfectly captures the melancholy texture of Philadelphia in the fall.
Forget Jan De Bont's folly and the hype surrounding the amateur, home movie boredom of The Blair Witch Project. The Sixth Sense is the kind of chilling film Robert Wise or Jacques Tourneur would have made were they still working today.
Not to be missed.
Philip Nutman