| USA, 1999. 107 mins.
Sixth Sense is a ghost story. It is also what they
call a ‘psychological thriller’ and has some genuinely chilling and/or shocking
moments. If you’re a horror buff you’ll know the drill: they build up the
tension, you know you’re going to jump… and then you jump anyway. Sixth Sense
has had loads of good reviews. I am not going to give anything away here except that I
really enjoyed it and it bothered me enough that I woke me up in the night a few times.
But then, I am a horror film fan – which in itself goes some way to saying that I
believe in ghosts.
Child psychologist Dr. Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis)
tries to help 8 (or 9?) year old Cole (Haley Joel Osment) whose life is made unbearable by
his ability to see ghosts. Toni Collette is touching and a little trashy as Cole’s
loving mother. The little boy who plays Cole is wonderful: serious, scared, brave, longing
to just ‘fit in’.
The film deals with two main issues (or, at least,
it did for me). Longing and grief – sometimes related, sometimes not – and how
longing pervades human life (and death). Every character in the film is longing for
something or someone to enter or leave their lives, and we see that death and longing are
alongside us all the time.
If you like Ghost or The Shining (and I love
‘em both) you will like this film.
Sixth Sense is released in the UK in November. |
