Entertaining and cerebral

Rating: 10/10 (24 November 2000)

Many will walk out of this film disgusted for one of two reasons:
1. The film failed to be The Sixth Sense 2.
2. The film was trying too hard to be The Sixth Sense 2.
In fact, it is the audience that wants so bad to see The Sixth Sense 2 that many are not going to be able to appreciate this film for what it really is, or understand the comments it makes about our own fascination with and need for heroes. This is a much more cerebral film than its predecessor. It is slow-moving, deliberate, and cautious. This is very much a drama with strange, supernatural undertones. And those undertones are very subtle. While the previous film was a mind game with the audience, this is a mind game between the characters.
The ending does have a twist, yes, but nowhere near the kind of twist The Sixth Sense had. It doesn't even try to duplicate that. It does change the way you look at the events you saw in the film, but not so much that you want to race back in and see it again to see if they pulled a fast one. It simply forces you try to make sense of the psychology of a certain character in the film.
The one flaw to this film is the very end, where we are told the fates of two major characters. Perhaps, since the film deals with comic books, this was intended to be comic, but I don't think the filmmakers actually intended for the audience to laugh at this moment, which is what happened when I saw the film, with an audience that had, up to that point, been enjoying themselves.