Review -- The Sixth Sense

In drama class, you learn about a thing called "willing suspension of disbelief." This is how the audience believes your performance by believing everything you do. They suspend their feelings of disbelief. And that’s just fine. In fact, that’s great. If you can convince an audience to believe you, you’ve done most of the work.

Horror movies are the best at getting you suspend your disbelief. No matter how exceedingly braindead the characters are, you feel compelled to scream at them "What the hell is your problem? Don’t go in there! Turn on a light or something!" or similar insults. That is because you have subconsiously turned on your willing suspension of disbelief. And even though you have probably not consiously done it, you are aware that you have done it. This is what makes it willing.

What most people don’t know is that willing suspension of disbelief has an evil twin. That’s right, it’s called "unwilling suspension of disbelief," and it’s much worse than its counterpart. Just by adding a prefix, you lose all ability to turn your disbelief back on. Going back to that scary movie; you always have the ability to tell yourself "Oh, come on, this is just a stupid slasher flick. Look, the blood’s not even the right color!"

Now imagine if you couldn’t say that. This was what I experienced watching The Sixth Sense. Oh, sure, I told myself it was just a movie about a dozen times, but not once did I believe myself and stop believing the film. I had the same experience with The Blair Witch Project. And I think that’s why I liked both films so much.

The thing is, the more believable a movie is, the more we end up liking it. If we have the ability to turn off our disbelief, then the movie ceases to be entertaining or, most importantly, scary. And where’s the fun in that?

You may be wondering why I’ve failed to describe any of The Sixth Sense in this review. Well, the thing is, surprise endings are a bitch to keep under wraps.

Grade - A-

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