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New Century of Cinema
DOWSE Guide to the
Movies
by Tony Lee editor of
Pigasus
Press
The Sixth Sense
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
103 minutes (15) widescreen 1.85:1
Hollywood video and DVD retail
review by Dawn Andrews
The film starts with a drunken yet subdued Dr Malcolm Crowe
(Bruce Willis) not exactly awed by a commendation from the City of Philadelphia for
his work with disturbed children. His wife (Olivia Williams) is struck by a premonitory
bout of shivers while she collects a bottle of wine from the basement, but all seems to
go well until a broken window is discovered, and the couple realise they have an
intruder. This turns out to be a highly disturbed former patient Vincent Grey (played
with an intensity of fear and loss by Donnie Walburg) who shoots the doc, then turns
the gun on himself, while the camera pans discreetly sideways. The film then jumps a
year. Dr Crowe watches a small boy as he leaves his house, looking down at notes about
the disturbed kid, whose symptoms are identical to those suffered by the ill-fated
Vincent.
The film belongs to Haley Joel Osment, who is superb as Joel, and Toni
Collette, who plays his bemused, confused and loving mother, who is unable to help the
terrified, intelligent child, bullied and hounded by both the living - and the dead.
It is gradually revealed that the boy is plagued by ghosts, bruised, clawed and
persecuted by them, and we enter his world when we start seeing them, too. They are
truly frightening visions who are always tormented, in pain, seeking to impart
information or perhaps seeking understanding.
This is a real thriller, in the true
sense of the word, although Willis plays the shrink with the kind of patronising air
that would have most kids these days coughing up blood - he is too detached, and all-
knowing. Even when he starts believing the boy, he retains his urbane air of superiority.
But the real dramatic thrills and spills are provided by the boy, his mother and the
ghosts themselves, always glimpsed at first as if out of the corner of the eye, they are
a real chill to the system, as is the final, and for me, totally unsuspected, shock
disclosure.
DVD extras: a comprehensive package. Scene access in 19 chapters, choice
of 2 soundtracks, 3 subtitle languages, interview with director, 6 short making-of
documentaries including storyboards and deleted scenes, TV adverts & cinema trailer,
cast and crew biographies.
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