A mini-masterpiece that delivers shocks, surprises and thrills.

Rating: 8/10 (12 October 2004)

A child physiologist (Bruce Willis) with a rocky marriage comes to visit a troubled boy (Haley Joel Osment) who claims to be seeing the dead.
The problem with movies is that someone has always been there first. I was lucky with Psycho in that I didn't know anything about the film before I saw it - although I would have dearly loved to see it on a cinema screen. Here I was told there was a "twist" and having been warned I looked out for the clues and got them.
(Not so sure I would have done if I had come in stone cold and just let it wash over me, though!)
Osment - as the little eight year old boy - is a revelation. He acts like he is thirty year old dwarf rather than a child. How does he do it? When I was that age I could barely prepare a piece of toast, Osment has to carry a major motion picture by his emotions alone. Truly as good a piece of acting as I have ever seen from a pre-teen.
Willis lowers his voice and tries to compete - but he is being outclassed and he knows it too!
This is a throwback picture in that the threat is outside and little glimpsed. It has the best of Hitchcock and a million B's to steal from; and this includes the reverse-of-norm wide shot - rather than close in on tragedy the camera pulls back as if not to intrude. There is a car accident scene where a medium-expanding-to-long shot is used in a masterful way.
There isn't a lot to write about this film beyond general platitudes about performance and moody setting. This is clever in that it never gives you too much to hang on to - no barrel chested hero about to come charging to the rescue. It wants to throw you off balance, keep you off balance, lead you to believe that it is going one way and then shots off in another.
True, there is nothing really essential about this film. Nothing that is going to change your opinion on anything - not even whether there really are ghosts and people that can communicate with them.
Manoj Night Shyamalam might not be Hitchcock quite yet, but at least he has learnt a few of his better tricks and has even added a few of his own.
Just because it is only escapist entertainment doesn't mean that it isn't also very good. It is actually very, very good.