Brilliantly made and acted with a thriller element.

Rating: 9/10 (9 November 2014)

I watched this before when I was younger and could still remember some of the scenes that had ingrained itself in my brain. My memory of this film was that it was horrifying, but after watching it again, it wasn't as scary as I'd remembered. But M. Night Shyamalan definitely did a good job in keeping the thriller feel of the movie throughout.
This film is just so brilliantly made and considering that it was made before the turn of the century, the visual effects were pretty good too. Every scene is so carefully executed with utmost precision that I had actually forgotten the crucial element of the story when I was watching this.
The acting is also magnificent. I had just watched Pulp Fiction prior to watching this (and I'm sorry but I do not get what Pulp Fiction is about and probably won't even review it) that I was somewhat taken aback at the change in Willis' character. Willis really got into his character here and you can really see the drastic difference between the characters he usually plays. Haley Joel Osment, is just my favourite child actor ever. The other movie he was in; Pay It Forward, is another favourite of mine and I don't know how the learned to act when he was so young but his face just makes the audience empathize with him. Toni Collette who plays Cole's mother is also a vivid character in this. She plays the conflict of loving her child and at the same time being frightened of him, perfectly. Her expressions were very readable.
The music in thisI don't think I noticed all that much. But what made this film all the more scary and which horror films have become experts at, are the sound effects. Whenever something is about to happen, the sound build-up matches the rising tension and then the brief sound explosions further enforces the impact when something appears. I think I probably got more frightened by the sound effects than the visual input itself.
Overall, this film is a masterpiece, however the ending was a bit abrupt for me. I did not fully understand what the closure was.
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