The Sixth Sense
Hollywood Pictures, 1999
Directed by M. Night Shyamalan

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There's nothing scarier than a good ghost story. The Sixth Sense is a great ghost story. A smart, original thriller that will scare you out of your wits and leave you with an extreme case of the heebiejeebies.

Bruce Willis stars as a child psychologist trying to help a troubled boy filled with constant anxiety and fear. The boy, played in unnervingly creepy fashion by Haley Joel Osment, has a secret. He sees dead people. And it's up to Willis to unlock the boy's secret, become a believer and help the boy come to terms with his special gift.

Writer-director M. Night Shyamalan uses standard filmmaking techniques and situations to get us jumping out of our seats (i.e., spooky music, dark closets, hands reaching out from under beds), but the methods are used so well, even the most jaded viewers will spend much of the movie peeking out from between their fingers and praying for the lights to come up.

But what makes The Sixth Sense different is that these formulaic devices are employed in the service of a non-traditional horror film. The Sixth Sense is not about monsters out to get you. Instead, Shyamalan opts for a supernatural psychological drama in which the real threat is the terror of psychological isolation: Willis is isolated from his wife, the boy -- isolated from his mother. The true fear at play is the fear of being alone. And, oh yeah, the ghosts are scary, too.

Shyamalan, who was raised in Philadelphia, makes good use of the city's colonial architecture and gloomy skies to provide a suitably spooky setting. The city's colonial history also figures nicely in the plot.

You can't say enough about the performance of Osment, whose best known previous performance was as Forrest Jr. in Forrest Gump. He's the best thing in this very good movie. Willis also does a decent job in a role that, for a change, requires him to stretch a little (he seems to do his best in movies with numerical titles -- 12 Monkeys, The Fifth Element, now, The Sixth Sense). Toni Collette is also outstanding as the boy's mom.

Also exceptional is the well-structured screenplay, which winds its way toward a clever ending that you won't expect. The Sixth Sense evokes two of the better ghost stories ever filmed -- Stanley Kubrick's The Shining and Ghost -- and by the time the credits roll, The Sixth Sense is well on its way to becoming a classic in its own right.

(c) Copyright 1999