The Sixth Sense Review
by "Mark O'Hara" (mwohara AT hotmail DOT com)September 7th, 1999
The Sixth Sense (1999)
A Film Review by Mark O'Hara
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Sure, "The Sixth Sense" has its share of clichés, but it is also one of the more original and thought-provoking horror dramas to appear in years. If you use movies purely for entertainment, then this one is not for you.
Young writer and director M. Night Shyamalan paces the story well, with a romantic opening scene followed by a tense scene upon which the weight of the movie eventually rests. In fact the movie has a habit of calming the viewer with a slow scene - though never a boring one - followed by a sequence that is fast-paced or even harrowing.
Bruce Willis has chosen his part well this time. He plays Dr. Malcolm Crowe, a Philadelphia-based child psychologist who has just received an award from the mayor's office. Apparently he has put everything in his life second to his career, and perhaps he and wife Anna (Olivia Williams) will grow closer now. Enter the harrowing scene. Upstairs, Anna discovers a broken window and articles of clothing shed in a path to the bathroom. Malcolm peers inside to see a violently disturbed man wearing only a pair of briefs. Shivering, this stranger confronts Malcolm, crying out "You failed me!" and revealing himself as a former patient of Malcolm's. Played convincingly by Donnie Wahlberg, this intruder raises a pistol and shoots Malcolm, and then turns the gun on himself.
The next scene opens "The Next Fall," a long shot of a tree-lined street of South Philly rowhouses filling the frame. We see Malcolm spying on a boy about nine years old. This boy, Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment) is troubled with a variety of symptoms. The first scene between doctor and patient happens in an empty Catholic church, Cole lining up his toy figures in one of the pews. The relationship continues with a small degree of reluctance on Cole's part: he does not wish to reveal his "secret," that which lies at the heart of his being afraid.
We know from the salvos of trailers that Cole sees "dead people." He has a bizarre knack of knowing the history of the old building in which he attends school. He knows, and reveals in anger, the nickname of his teacher. What seems to be troubling Cole more than the visions themselves is his inability to cope with them. His loving single mom Lynn (Toni Collette) tolerates the boy's vagaries, and prays they will get along on her two jobs. Meanwhile, Dr. Malcolm Crowe continues to meet with Cole and, it seems, always visits Cole for these meetings; we never see the psychologist's office.
Viewing this movie I found the subplot between Malcolm and Anna Crowe to be scant and rather unsatisfying. There's the scene in which Malcolm arrives late at a fancy restaurant, and Anna ignores him, paying for her dinner and whispering, "Happy Anniversary, Malcolm" before she leaves him sitting there. Later Malcolm seems oddly detached when a younger man from Anna's workplace begins to show interest in her. To what is this all leading?
Some of the most chilling scenes in memory surface in Cole's hauntings. He is petrified of the ghost that confront him; they have even physically abused him in their anger. One early teenage boy walks out of Cole's room and beckons Cole to follow, saying, "C'mon, I'll show you where my dad keeps his guns." When he turns around we see the bloody pulp of the back of his head. To what is all this leading?
Both plots are headed toward an ending that will shock you and cause you to think for hours afterward.
One of the reasons the movie succeeds is Haley Joel Osment. This experienced young actor seems to have his own special method of making his character believable. When he crawls into the makeshift tent in his room - his refuge filled with stolen holy statues - the horrid nightmares of childhood flood back to us, too. In fact this boy possesses an amazing endurance, hiding the heart of his affliction from his mother, postponing telling his doctor until a moment after the doctor tells his own secrets to the boy. An Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor would not be out of order for Osment.
And perhaps a Best Actor Nomination should come for Willis. He shows admirable restraint here, as in the scene where he comes home to an immense empty house, climbs the stairs to the bedroom to find Anna in the shower. Turning slightly he spots a bottle of Zoloft anti-depressant in the medicine cabinet. He is surprised, and apparently so numbed that he merely drifts out of the room and the house. In no place does Willis overact or deliver an unconvincing response.
Olivia Williams is poignant as Anna Crowe, although the script calls for her, necessarily, only a few times. (Williams is, I might point out, a good ten years or so younger than Willis, continuing Hollywood's trend of young woman/older man…) As Cole's mother Lynn, Toni Collette gets more screen time, and comes off as a realistic, confused parent. Especially moving is her reaction when Cole finally reveals what's up with him.
The film is full of various types of imagery, many of the scenes opening with shots of statues and sculptures around Philadelphia. Add this to the somewhat gothic houses and school buildings inhabited by the characters - living and dead - and the effect is fascinatingly morbid. The location scouts did their jobs well, and I'm sure Willis felt at home during the shooting, only a few miles distant from his native Pennsgrove, across the river in South Jersey. I was also struck by the original use of videos in the story, in the recurring wedding tape watched by Anna, as well as the tape that acts as a revelation to a grieving father.
Sidney the psychiatrist in the television version of "MASH" said once that the real battlefields are the kitchen, the bedroom, the school yard, and that's what we see here, characters valiantly facing the wars that uproot their lives. The devastation here is all in the mind, and M. Night Shyamalan - who appears in a cameo as Dr. Hill, who suspects Lynn of abusing Cole - manipulates both the medium and the genre with expertise.
September 6, 1999
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