A *superior* ghost story.

Rating: 10/10 (6 August 1999)

I was intrigued by the premise but hesitant. Everyone whispered in the trailer, it looked like another supernatural action film, and Bruce Willis has hair (the less hair he seems to have, the better his part).
Boy, was I wrong.
Everything about this movie was well crafted. The performances from the boy and his mother were very natural...and Bruce Willis gives one of his best performances *ever*. The lighting, music and script are similarly excellent.
One interesting feature is that many of the scenes begin with a "pillow shot" (a Japanese technique where incongruous scenes of nature "pillow" the area between scenes...a cinematic pause, if you will). Except where the typical pillow shot is a stream, mountain or seashore (see the works of Takeshi "Beat" Kitano for examples), these shot in "The Sixth Sense" are dark, brooding, somber and sometimes menacing. They're not at all overtly scary or shocking...but they will disquiet you.
Between this and "The Blair With Project," perhaps film-makers are learning that size (and noise, and blood) doesn't matter after all. We can only hope...