The Sixth Sense

Starring: Bruce Willis, Haley Joel Osment, Olivia Williams

M. Night Shyamalan has made a marvelous film by disguising a touching story about friendship as a horror movie. Truth be told, I had little interest in this picture when I first heard about it and saw its previews. I figured it for another schlock-slasher epic (despite the presence of a bona fide movie star), and I am not much of a horror movie person. (I’m kind of wimpy about being scared.) But the film completely confounded my expectations. Bruce Willis plays Malcolm Crowe, a psychologist who specializes in helping disturbed young people. He is also tormented by a traumatic episode from his past. Haley Joel Osment plays Cole Sear, a boy who has the ability to see the dead, and he is terrified by it. The film traces their relationship, and the way they help each other to resolve their conflicts, but I won’t say any more about the plot. Willis, in a continuing quest to stake out his turf as a serious actor, is simply outstanding. He exercises tremendous restraint, willingly forgoing any movie-star tics or tricks. Every intonation and line reading is perfect, and he projects an air of seriousness and gravity which those familiar with him only from the “Die Hard” series would not expect.

Willis is totally convincing in the role and probably deserved an Oscar nomination. As Cole, the young visionary, Osment is truly uncanny, projecting something ageless and profound far beyond his years. The combination of fear and courage that he projects is memorable. We experience the events of the movie through him, and so cannot help but empathize with his fear and his need for salvation. That “The Sixth Sense” nods to a few horror movie conventions is almost beside the point. Yes, there are a few scary jolts, and a few flashes of mayhem, but the total onscreen gore probably totals less than 5 minutes. Shyamalan gets our imaginations working for him; we scare ourselves easily as much as he scares us. He doesn’t resort to the monster-jumping-out-of-the-closet tricks that the genre typically employs; in fact, one memorable audience gasp was elicited by nothing more than a simple shadow passing across the screen. The anticipation of the horror is much more spine-tingling than the actual horror itself, and once the horror passes, it usually leaves behind a whiff of sadness, not terror. That sense of sadness is also reflected by the score, which bypasses the usual fright music for something more muted, and by the wintry, frosty palette of the cinematography.

The ending of “The Sixth Sense” is at once hopeful and sad. It has the tug of longing leavened with the bitterness of truth, and that's not something you can say about most “horror” movies. Shyamalan has pulled off a bit of alchemy here, in more ways than one. These days we often hear of blockbuster scripts that are churned out in six weeks; Shyamalan reportedly worked on his script for more than a year, and the effort shows. It’s a terrific picture. (2/22/00)