Review 249: The Sixth Sense

The Sixth Sense is a beautiful, touching and totally gripping supernatural, mystery film and M. Night Shyamalan's breakout and possibly his best film.

Malcom Crowe (Bruce Willis) is a child psychologist who receives an award on the same night that he is visited by a very unhappy ex-patient. After this encounter, Crowe takes on the task of curing a young boy named Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment) with the same ills as the ex-patient. This boy "sees dead people". Crowe spends a lot of time with Cole much to the dismay of his wife, Anna (Olivia Williams). Cole's mom, Lynn (Toni Collette) is at her wit's end with what to do about her son's increasing problems. Crowe is the boy's only hope.

The plot is incredibly clever that there's an ingenius twist at the end which making it "a real must see twice". And it's really moving as well and deals with touching themes such as the difficulty adults and children have communicating with each other, love, hope, understanding and accepting people for what they are. Throughout the film, the tone is compassionate and compeling.

So what are The Sixth Sense's theme?

The difficulty adults and children have communicating with each other: Cole has this ability, this sixth sense, to talk to dead people but no one believes him, not even his mum.

Love: Even though she doesn't believe him, Cole's mum loves him dearly.

Hope: Cole sees Crowe as his only hope of solving his problem. He has no one else to turn to as everyone thinks hes a freak.

Understanding: Crowe is the only person who believes Cole and does all this research to try and help him. Also as he learn more about him he becomes compassionate and sympathetic towards him. 

M. Night Shyamalan's direction is stylish, smart, the lighting is fantastic, the cinematography is beautiful, the score by James Newton Howard is creepy and infectious, its well paced, it's totally gripping, the make is rich, the costumes are brilliant, the production design is terrific, the tension is killing, the props are well crafted and the twist ending was mesmirising

The acting is sensational, particularly from Bruce Willis and Haley Joel Osment: Willis puts on such a lovely voice and Osment portrays the scared human emotion of his character perfectly. Also Toni Collette and Olivia Williams are just fine in their supporting roles

The Sixth Sense is a totally gripping, incredibly clever, supernatural, mystery film and a film I'd highly recommend seeing twice.

Please comment and subscribe, 5/5.

The Anonymous Critic.