The Super Sixth Sense

Rating: 7/10 (7 October 2019)

Although "Unbreakable" is essentially writer-director M. Night Shyamalan's prior film "The Sixth Sense" (1999) remade as a superhero movie, it does integrate the world of comic books into what was an effective formula in the first place. Once again, there's a young boy who believes in something that Bruce Willis is partly oblivious to. Again, that boy cries over the secret in a revelatory moment with a parent. Again, Willis's character has marital problems, and the picture is crammed with pregnant pauses--mostly of Willis looking away wistfully, as though that's his idea of acting in something other than a "Die Hard" sequel or retread. This time, however, Willis has the sixth sense--plus, he's unbreakable, and Samuel L. Jackson substitutes in the way of an adviser to the person with supernatural powers. I also like the obligatory (in a Shyamalan movie, that is) twist ending even though it's humorously abrupt, which is incongruent with the otherwise somber treatment and subject matter.
Appropriately, Jackson's character invests in comic books instead of the prior picture's psychobabble, too. They inspire him to seek out a real superhero. For the most part, "Unbreakable" is filmed in an identical manner of realistic supernaturalism as in "The Sixth Sense" and quite apart from Shyamalan's more Hollywood, off-the-assembly-line products that comprise his subsequent oeuvre. But, there are flashes--like the hero's sixth-sense visions of others' misdeeds in the story--of comic-book-like imagery, although this is mostly reserved for the superheroic stuff. "Unbreakable" also benefits today as a contrast to the explosion since its release of big-budget and doggedly light and unrealistic action-packed superhero fare from the MCU and elsewhere. In that sense, it comes across as both familiar and refreshing.