IMDb #164 Review: The Sixth Sense (1999)

Source: Wikipedia

Back when Bruce Willis had hair and M. Night Shyamalan had a bright future, there was a "thriller" (which wasn't that scary) about a depressed child psychologist and and a mopey latchkey kid who inexplicably "sees dead people."

The dead can't see each other, but considering how many people have died in Philadelphia history (a fuckton), the earthly afterlife must be pretty damn crowded. Which explains the rest of the film.

Supernatural suspense! Single mama drama! Every shitty elementary school experience rolled into one cliched package! Theater drama! Oblique Catholic symbolism! And suddenly, a micro-episode of PREPUBESCENT GHOST DETECTIVE, in which a squeaky-voiced squirt and an old due crash a wake and solve a girl's murder via VHS tapes of puppets shows.

It juggles all these elements like jugs of nitroglycerin -- captivating, but exhausting to watch. Finally, for its last trick, the juggler strikes a match and explodes into flesh-confetti. You clap along nervously. Sure, it was a neat show of skill, but...why?

This kid, who could revolutionize scientific and religious understanding of mortality, opts to solve local problems one at a time, as inefficiently as humanly possible. Granted, science would probably slap him with a schizophrenia label, pump him full of drugs, and lock him up. So maybe the kid's smarter than he seems.

Most of the run-time consists of the hyper-stressed mama trying to dig into her freaky little boy's head, whereas the stalker child psychologist succeeds through calm persistence.

These mind games make a pleasant distraction from the premise and overall plot. But then the famous twist hits, and the first five minutes of the movie finally make sense. M. Night gleefully points out every obscure shred of foreshadowing, to save you the trouble of ever watching his movie again.

But even in his biggest success, the big M foreshadows his present slump. Ambitious (read: bloated) plot construction, pathetic humor, unnecessary cheesiness, clunky dialogue, and of course the tweeest. Hindsight sours the taste of success.

And one more thing, a critical research failure. WE HAVE MORE THAN FIVE SENSES, GENIUS. WAY, WAY MORE.

107 minutes