"The Sixth Sense" (1999) Review
Saturday-Sunday, November 16-17, 2024
The Sixth Sense (1999) Review
At the suggestion of our friend Optimum, I recently watched The Sixth Sense, a movie from 1999 that I had never seen. It was definitely worth the trip to the library for the DVD! When we discussed it briefly at CSLF, someone observed that it showed that Bruce Willis was really an actor and not just an action star, but I had watched Moonlighting in its original broadcast run, so I knew he could act. He’s also quite nice looking, although not super cute like Keanu Reeves.
Just as in The Matrix, all the cast was really good. Toni Collette as the boy’s mother turned in a great performance. I was surprised, looking at her bio just now, to see that she was 27 at the time. I perceived her as older. As a working-class single mother, it was authentic for her to look older than her age. With the help of the screenwriter, she portrayed a character who was flawed but sincerely devoted to her son. I especially liked the scene with the puppy in the laundry basket.
The setting was very well chosen and filmed. My mother is from Philadelphia, and I visited many times in the 1970s. The Sear family’s house, the school, and the streets had a very familiar look. Basements. So many basements. I don’t remember ever going into any rich people’s houses in Philadelphia, but the interiors of higher-income families’ houses were familiar from other cities.
The pacing was very good. I had time to assimilate events without feeling rushed. The director didn’t overemphasize or overexplain. Anna Crowe’s “maybe going to be a romance, actually no” was hinted just enough to make the concept clear with almost no depiction. Cole’s experiences at school were unfortunately predictable, see “29 years of homeschooling”.
I knew what the unexpected twist at the end was, so I enjoyed the various ways the film hinted at the secret, with increasingly greater obviousness, although you could easily miss it if you weren’t looking for it. If you missed the clues, you were probably deeply involved in the situation of young Cole, an amazing performance by Haley Joel Osment. Child characters in movies are often intolerable, but he wasn’t. He was rude, self-involved, vulnerable, honest, and ultimately, incredibly brave. When he made the decision to address the ghost of a sick, teenaged girl, it turned the movie into a real hero story.
Although I was watching for brilliant editing by Andrew Mondshein, I have to say I didn’t really see it. However, the scene in which Cole and Dr. Crowe go to the wake of the teenager and, with her help, give her father a video of how she was killed was very well done. It wasn’t realistic social interaction, but it made an impression almost as if it had been.
As with The Matrix, the High Concept in The Sixth Sense wasn’t presented with 100% consistency. If “they don’t know they’re dead,” as Cole says at one point, the teenaged girl wouldn’t have come from the ‘burbs to tell Cole she was murdered and then given him the evidence. How could his grandmother have known she was in her grave and visited by her daughter? In addition, the feature of feeling cold around a ghost was not always applied.
These are minor quibbles, though. Overall, I would say this movie lived up to its hype.
Also, good pictures, thanks.
Drama Queen and her husband were getting shack-wacky, so they came over with the baby for the afternoon. Everyone got plenty of time with the baby, including Thor, who has long been an object of awe among his contemporaries because - with seven younger siblings - he knows what to do when someone hands him a baby.
The DQ family went home after dinner, but Thor stayed to play Wingspan (Vlad won, Thor was second), but he was going to stop by Chez DQ to help his brother-in-law restrain Crunky, the black cat, while DQ cut her claws. They offered a cocktail - son-in-law has worked as a bartender - and cheesecake as an incentive.