The Sixth Sense This is another movie that was not what was expected. I went into it thinking I'd be getting a horror flick, or a drama, or something that had me jumping in my chair every 5 minutes with some horribly obviously constructed "jump" mechanism.

Not so.

The Sixth Sense was a darn fine movie, and if I may say, has great potential to be a good date movie. There is a great mix of jumps and scares and emotion that will have your SO clining to you and then crying in a Phenomenon type of way. The actors are good, characters developing and gore disturbing.

There are slow parts though. Not that there is nothing going on, but you will find while watching this that you're going to have a couple of times (about 1/3 in and 2/3 in) where you sort of yawn, shift position, and wonder when things are going to get rolling again.

The brilliance of this movie I think is the way that things sneak up on you. I admit I read a couple of spoilers before going to see it so I had a pretty good idea about what was going on and what was going to happen. The beginning is basically a set-up of sorts, getting things all up and going and introducing the people, places and things that you need at the time to be introduced to. The main point of the movie, the fact that the kid can see ghosts, is hinted at strongly through the first part of the movie but never really said out loud or shown. Things get going after that, and you get to see them. Then we get emotion, drama and all that stuff. Basically the movie goes from drama to horror to romantic in the space of ~2 hours. Not that there is anything wrong with that of course.

The characters are probably what impressed me most. Especially Cole Sear, played by Haley Joel Osment. In a world where there are a lot of movies with extremely unbelievable child actors, it was nice to watch one that you didn't cringe every time he had a line. He was great no matter if he was happy, sad, scared, sick or hurt. Bruce Willis was also quite acceptable, and it was nice to see him playing someone who wasn't involved in some superstructure blowing up :)

I'd just like to touch on the "scary" parts of the movie. I didn't feel they were "constructed" too badly. There were parts where there was no music and a character going into a dark room by themselves and you think to yourself "gee! I wonder what is going to happen?" but that's all part of the game. The scares are constructed well, a la Blair Witch, where what you don't see, or barely see, makes things all the more frightening. There are a few scenes of ghosts who died of horrible injuries that are pretty rude. But what had me gripping the sides of my chair was not the gore, but the placidity of the ghost, which was more disturbing for some reason.

All in all a good movie. I'd have no qualms about saying go see it in the theatre. Just remember that it's not a horror movie, or an intense drama, but a melding of the two combined with some emotional stuff.

Official Site Posted by Arcterex at September 08, 1999 03:48 PM