Young Cole Sear has a terrible gift. He can see dead people. I'm not spoiling anything by revealing this aspect of The Sixth Sense, because his admonishing scene has gone on to become one of the most quotable movie lines of the last several years. However, whether you're seeing this movie for the first or the tenth time, what may disappoint you is how late into the picture this confession occurs. By the time you hear the little boy whisper it, you're seriously wondering if the credits are going to start to roll.
Of course they don't start to roll, and ultimately a great deal of the movie's success has come from the actual, much ballyhooed conclusion, which is admittedly an interesting concept. The problem with M. Night Shyamalan's screenplay, however, is in how many leftover plot holes it leaves. So many holes, in fact, that even when analyzed on repeat viewings, the film plays more and more like a sophisticated gimmick. At least The Blair Witch Project didn't fudge the "facts".
Our tale begins in Philadelphia, a city ripe with history and, consequently, ghosts. A child psychologist named Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis) tries to help an unpopular boy named Cole (Haley Joel Osment). Still mending emotionally from his parent's divorce, Cole may be suffering from a disorder of some kind, but Crowe is confused when he overhears the boy speaking in Latin and roleplaying with figurines inside of churches. Could there be something else at work here? His mother (Toni Collette from Muriel's Wedding) sure seems to think so. Around the house, kitchen cupboards swing open and the temperature is erratic even though the gauge works fine.
I guess the real problem I had with this movie is that it doesn't really fight to build on the tension and layers it works so hard to establish. The pace in the first half is leaden and awkward. It's as if director Shyamalan thought that as long as the audience implicitly knows that the subject matter will be supernatural occurences, everything else will fall into place. While this is the case in a few scenes, the overall result isn't terribly cohesive.
On the other hand, the players all seem to have their parts down cold: Willis is effective as a figure trying to address his own personal demons, and Osment deservedly received a Best Supporting Actor nomination for what is essentially a leading role. Toni Collette adds emotional depth to the otherwise bland mood, and watch for former New Kid Donnie Wahlberg as one of Crowe's patients.
By waiting to introduce the so-called dead people until late in the game, Shyamalan tries to pull a "Spielberg's shark" out of his hat, but the attempt never really succeeds. Ultimately, the Sixth Sense is what it is, though: a creepy ghost story. I'm not convinced it was worth all of the accolades and hype it received when it first came out, but it is undoubtedly suspenseful in parts and Willis and Osment make it worth the price of the popcorn.
