A Film For Thinking People

Rating: Null/10 (24 June 2004)

A child psychologist, played by Bruce Willis, tries to help a troubled boy, played by Haley Joel Osment, who says he sees ghosts. This film could easily have been one of those dreadful fright night horror flicks played for cheap shocks, aimed at a juvenile mind. Instead, the film maker chose to tell a story of fragile human feelings, and hidden assumptions. "The Sixth Sense" thus appeals to a more mature audience.
This film is carefully constructed, and deliberately slow, so that we can absorb the excellent cinematography, and have a chance to find clues that will help us avoid preconceived ideas. But our assumptions are hard to overcome, and most of us are headed for a surprise ending, an outcome which is made possible as a result of superb film editing.
And the acting is well above average. I would not have cast Willis in the role of the fatherly psychologist, but he is more convincing than I would have predicted. Osment's performance is as good as I have ever seen for a child actor. And Toni Collette is totally convincing as the boy's mother. Both Osment and Collette deserved their Oscar nominations.
This film may, or may not, have a subtext. I found what could be one, but then I may have been reading too much into the story. Sensitive, thought provoking, and well crafted, "The Sixth Sense" is one of the better films of the last ten years.