Whatever You Do, Don't Blame It On The "Night"...

Rating: 9/10 (4 December 2008)

So you wanna know who's responsible for the disgusting glut of weak-ass, PG-13-rated bundles of porcine fecal matter trying to pass themselves off as 'horror movies?' Well, folks, just blame M. Night Shyamalan.
No, let me take that back...Let's not blame 'Night', but the sorry excuses for writers, producers and directors who called themselves attempting to surpass the brilliance of Shyamalan's best movie so far...THE SIXTH SENSE.
With a smooth effortlessness that's just about as terrifying as the movie itself, Shyamalan brings us the damn-near perfect story of Dr. Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis in a role that shattered everyone's prejudices about him as an actor), a child psychologist who is shot by one of his former patients (an almost unrecognizable Donnie Wahlberg), who then commits suicide. Sometime after this ordeal, feeling that he failed his late charge, Malcolm attempts to find redemption by helping out a distressed young boy named Cole Sear, (Haley Joel Osment's career-making performance). who can "see" dead people and communicate with them.
At no time are you ever unaware of how much you care for these characters, and how extreme the situation is for them, which makes the shocks and scares twice as intense as any you could ever find in a PG-13-rated flick before, (except maybe for POLTERGEIST.) Plus there are fantastic performances all the way round by Willis and Osment, backed up by great turns by Toni Collette (who was nominated for Best Supporting Actress as Cole's tough- but-tender mom) and Olivia Williams as Malcolm's former fiancée.
Even after multiple viewings, the storytelling skill that Shyamalan has is faultless, and still leaves you scratching your head as to how you could've missed the clues that lead to one of the most spellbinding, jaw-dropping endings to come along in many moons. Some people might figure it out in the first five minutes, but I will confess - Night so thoroughly pulled me into his world, that I wasn't one of them.
SENSE was both a blessing and a curse to Shyamalan, since newly-won fans now expected ALL of his movies to have that tricky "twist" ending to stun and surprise them. Because of that, the quality of the movies that followed SENSE was inconsistent to say the least. People still debate about the merits of UNBREAKABLE and SIGNS, or even if THE VILLAGE should've been made at all.
Personally, I like everything he's done since, flaws and all. But as far as his career is concerned, THE SIXTH SENSE is like his "CITIZEN KANE," and considering the genre, is every bit as monumentally good as Orson Welles' towering achievement.
THE SIXTH SENSE is without a doubt a "must-have" for your DVD library.