Review of The Sixth Sense (1999) by Nicholasbert — 09 Apr 2015

A modern classic in the thriller genre, The Sixth Sense is proof that the standards have been lowering themselves since Hitchcock, and by a lot. It's not clear whether this film is at times trying to be actually scary or is simply hightening the tension, with half jump scares and some sketched attempt at a scary soundtrack. I don't see how people call the final "revelation" (and note the inverted commas) a "twist", when it was clear from twenty minutes in what the situation was. Maybe, as I said, standards have been lowered so much that people go see thriller movies with their brains turned off. To put the icing on the cake, everything is whispered in the hopes of giving dialogue depth, obviously failing.

Anyway, not everything is terrible: the idea is brilliant on paper, and it was supported by somewhat decent performances by Bruce Willis (we don't get to say that often) and Toni Collette. In fact, I think their performances were great when you wager in the childish script they had to deal with.