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First
things first: If you have any plans at all to see The Sixth
Sense, do not read this review. You'll thank me later. I'll
wait here patiently for a moment while you hit the "back" button
on your web browser.
Hmmm,
hmmm, hmmm� just sit right down and you'll hear a tale, a tale
of a fateful trip�that started from this tropic port aboard this
tiny ship�
Okay.
Now that they're gone, we can talk freely. I'm going to such lengths
because The Sixth Sense is almost entirely dependent on
its ending for its considerable box office success. Audiences
leaving the theater buzz with that killer word of mouth that studios
would send thousands of Marketing execs to their deaths to achieve.
It isn't Blair Witch-level word of mouth, mind you, but
it's not bad. The secret of its surprise ending is on par with
the "big secret" from The Crying Game, if you remember
that far back. So far be it from me to blow it for the unenlightened.
Now
I enjoyed The Sixth Sense quite a bit. It's essentially
a well-written, superbly executed episode of The Twilight Zone,
minus the Rod Serling bookends. The problem was, I had this picture
totally nailed about halfway through. When you watch as many movies
as I do, you start to notice how screenplays are put together,
and you notice when something is out of whack. I happened to notice
a key scene missing from this one, and after a few more scenes,
I figured out why it was missing. The rest, for me, was d�nouement.
Fortunately, the fantastically creepy mood sustained by writer-director
Shyamalan was enough to see me through.
A
sedate Bruce Willis stars as child psychologist Malcomb Crowe,
a man seemingly at the top of his game. As the film opens, he
and his fabulously sexy wife Anna (Rushmore's Olivia Williams)
are celebrating an Outstanding Service Award just handed to him
by the mayor of Philadelphia. Their celebration is interrupted,
however, by the break-in of desperate New Kid on the Block Donnie
Wahlberg, looking for a new record deal— I mean, a former
patient named Vincent Gray demanding at gunpoint an explanation
of why Crowe couldn't help him overcome his childhood trauma.
Before Crowe knows it, he has a slug in his belly and a suicide
in his bathroom.
Fast-forward
a year. A seemingly recovered Crowe has made the acquaintance
of a troubled youngster named Cole Sear. Cole is a somber, furtive
little boy afraid of his own shadow; he has no friends, has driven
his working mom Lynn (Toni Collete) to distraction, and has a
"secret" that he won't share with anyone. He also continually
turns up with bruises and scratches on his body from some unknown
source. Crowe, seeing in Cole a chance to redeem himself for his
failure with Vincent, vows to help the boy get to the root of
his fear.
If
you've seen the trailer, you already know Cole's secret. "I see
dead people," he tells Crowe in an ominous whisper that would
melt the heart of Wednesday Addams. And see them he does. To reveal
the circumstances of their appearance would spoil the film's precarious
magic, for Shyamalan does a superb job of orchestrating the mounting
sense of dread as he draws us farther and deeper into Cole's world.
We begin to experience the boy's terror firsthand. We understand
why he can't tell the truth to his mother, why he is terrified
of dark places, why he collects religious icons to use as talismans
to ward off the icy fear enveloping his heart. As Crowe talks
with the boy, works his way inside, he begins to doubt his power
to help him. But he can't let it go, even if it means that he
and his wife have become strangers. In fact, they don't even speak
to each other anymore.
The
Sixth Sense has the virtue of subtlety, which makes it all
the more surprising that audiences have embraced it. It is often
slow going. Those of you who are used to Bruce Willis dodging
fireballs and cracking wise may find that his somnambulant performance
as Crowe takes a little getting used to. But stick with him—
what this film reveals is that Willis's great performances in
Pulp Fiction and Nobody's Fool were not accidents.
The guy can act. As effectively low-key as he is, however, the
film would never have worked without the startling effort put
forth by young Haley Joel Osment, who really ought to receive
Academy Award recognition for his turn as Cole. The script really
puts him through his paces; he's in nearly every scene, and is
required to convey a range of fear and emotional turmoil that
would send many adult actors running for their Scientology counselors.
In
lesser hands, The Sixth Sense might have been unforgivably
gimmicky. It might have suffered from the cartoonish emotions
that plagued Ghost, or it might have been afflicted by
terminal CGI-itis like The Haunting. If you're willing
to accept the notion that the restless Dead walk the earth attempting
to resolve their unfinished business, however, then the story
is never less than utterly convincing. It may not be the most
original of plots—- besides the Twilight Zone and
Ghost references, the film borrows heavily, I think, from
Alan Parker's 1987 Mickey Roarke freak-out Angel Heart—
but the genius is in the execution. The Sixth Sense works
as a nifty bit of misdirection, a magic trick so clever that you
want to see it again right away to see if you can spot clues that
you missed the first time. It also offers a couple of genuine
heart-pounding shocks, which makes it more successful in that
respect than The Blair Witch Project, which, for all its
merits, never achieves any good old-fashioned horror movie moments.
If
you've seen this film, drop me a line and let me know if you figured
out the movie early on, like I did. If you got it even sooner
than me, then my hat's off to you. It's kind of a cool feeling,
really, being the only one in the crowd who has a movie figured
out. I'd like to say that it happens all the time, but I'd be
lying. The Crying Game sure as hell had me fooled. Next
time, I'll know to look for the Adam's Apple.
August
22 , 1999
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