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Overall Rating
  Awesome: 63.74%
Worth A Look: 20.7%
Average: 3.85%
Pretty Bad: 6.78%
Total Crap: 4.95%
23 reviews, 408 user ratings
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| Sixth Sense, The |
by Chris Parry
"You know it's good, but do you really know HOW good?"

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Let's not mess around here. This movie is a dead set mindfuck. Seldom what it seems, rarely alike anything you've seen before. Oh, I know what you're thinking. "Mindless praise from a Brucie fan." Well you couldn't be further from the truth. Ever since the balding one left Moonlighting he's stumbled from tragedy to tragedy, with only the Die Hard series keeping him away from food stamps. But this... this movie is a ripsnorter. In every aspect.The premise sounds very formulaic. Kid can see ghosts. Bruce is a psychologist out to help him. It's almost a crabon copy of Mercury Rising, with the word "ghosts" substituted for "code".
But the devil's in the details, people.
Is this an action movie? Heck no. Not a chase to be seen.
Is it a horror flick? Nay way, though it'll give you a good fright.
Is it a drama? Aaaaaaaaw yeah. In ways Joe Hollywood could 99 times out of 100 never conceive. This film has the kind of atmosphere that makes a person shuffle in their seat. This film has an atmosphere that makes you hark back to nightmares and noises in the night and wonder what they really were. This film has an atmosphere that made people NOT RUSTLE THEIR BAGS OF CHIPS FOR THE WHOLE MOVIE! Swear.
Haley Joel Osment plays (brilliantly) the part of the kid nobody likes who has good reason to be messed in the head. He can see the people that we last saw in coffins. Walking around. Looking all gooey and gross. Let's be honest here, that'd do your head in. His mom, played by the ever reputation-enhancing Toni Collette, doesn't know why her son is a headcase. Can Doctor Bruce get inside his little cranium and see what makes him click?
The real quality of The Sixth Sense is that it doesn't ever try to follow a formula. The usual Hollywood urge to throw in a chase or big climactic showdown just doesn't eventuate, and the film is better for it. Seen in a packed audience that, frankly, expect a slasher/horror film of the Urban Legend/I Still Know kind, it's clear that initially people expect big scares and mass panic.
Folks, it ain't that kind of puppy. This is closer to Silence Of The Lambs than it is to Scream. There's no whodunnit. there's no bimbos. There's no man with hook. There's no pop culture refs. And while there's an incredible sense of dread, there's no fear of impending death.
It's all about the unknown. And the unknown is always scarier in your head than it is on a screen. It's like great sex in that the time spent getting to the climax is often more enjoyable than the climax itself. The writer/director of The Sixth Sense knows this full well, and underplays everything. Expectation is key. Cheap scares mean nothing, but a scare that builds for a half hour, that's the one that makes you pee your pants.
The Sixth Sense is the kind of film that makes you sleep under the covers so that the ghost/alien/devil/clown won't get you, for weeks afterwards.I can't personally imagine anyone who isn't going to think this film is fantastic. Except perhaps the people who watched The David Letterman Show when Nathan Lane was being interviewed, where the fat fucker gave away the entire end twist. Thanks Nate. Instead of giving away the end of great films like this one, perhaps you'd like to make a film worth watching.
del.icio.us
link directly to this review at http://efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=1862&reviewer=1 originally posted: 10/10/99 19:17:29
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USA 06-Aug-1999 (PG-13)
UK N/A
Australia 07-Oct-1999 (MA)
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