Clever ghost story

Rating: Null/10 (15 February 2002)

Award winning child psychologist Malcolm Crowe is confronted and shot by an ex-patient. Years later he has recovered from this experience and begins to treat a child who suffers from similar problems. The young boy, Cole, claims to see dead people and requires Crowe's constant attention - to the detriment of his marriage. With Cole becoming increasingly scared and withdrawn, Crowe is his last hope.
This film is an old-fashioned ghost story, replacing gore with a genuine spooky atmosphere. The story is deceptively simple and plays almost innocently for the whole film until Cole's visions are revealed. The true genius of the story isn't revealed until the final twist when we see how we have been duped by a good director! Even without the twist, this is still a good film - the story of Cole is well done and is chilling and frightening sometimes. However it is also quite human, as it is essentially the story of Cole overcoming his fears.
Willis delivers a careful, understated performance. His choices in recent years have been remarkably good (with some exceptions). This is just yet another great role from a man who's career looked like it was dying after "striking distance" and "colour of night". He hits just the right note here. I'm not a big fan of child actors as a rule, but Osment is really good here - never falling into the "cute child" category. I don't know if he should have got the Oscar, but he's still good. The rest of the cast are good, but really it's the central relationship between Willis and Osment that makes this film.
The plot may have some holes in (some ghosts hang around where they died, one comes to find Cole etc), but overall this is very good. The director weaves an interesting story that stands on its own, but makes it even more memorable by challenging how we accept and assume things in movies by delivering a great, clever twist at the end.