Movie Review: The Sixth Sense (1999)

Don’t worry, I have seen this “essential” movie before so you don’t have to lose your shit. It’s just that I haven’t seen this movie in a few years and thought it could be good to give it a little rewatch to refresh my memory of it. So now I’ve seen it (again) and now I will review it (for the first time).

Ladies and gentlemen, do you have… “The Sixth Sense”?

In this movie we follow child psychologist Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis) as he after getting shot, takes on a new patient. This patient is nine year old Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment) who apparently can see dead people… who don’t know they’re dead! From that you might expect “Oh, it’s a horror movie then!”. But I wouldn’t really call “The Sixth Sense” a horror movie per se. I would say that it is a drama with thriller elements. Sure, there are parts that you could argue are straight up horror-related, but I counter with the fact that this movie never really tries to full on scare you, it just wants to get udner your skin and make you feel a little bit uneasy. Kind of like a thriller. But if you analyze the plot, it is really a drama-thriller, not a horror movie. Anyway, with all of that bullshit out of the way, I loved the plot. It built up a lot of suspense, it showed excellent drama and it was just overall really great. And despite knowing the final twist, I still think it is one of the greatest twists ever. I’m not gonna spoil it if you somehow haven’t seen this movie at all.

The characters in this movie (despite the unusual situation) all feel like real people, none of them simply felt like characters in a movie. And I think a lot of that comes from a combination of excellent writing and some pretty great performances, three in particular. First off we have Bruce Willis who is actually acting and playing a character not just being Mr. Grumpy action dude. Jokes aside, Bruce Willis is great in this movie, playing a very human character who you’d just wanna be friends with. Next up is Haley Joel Osment who gives possibly the greatest performance by a child-actor ever. And if not THE best, at least one of the best. The final performance I wanted to mention was that of Toni Collette who plays Osment’s mom. She was excellent in the movie, portraying every emotion you could ever mention. Yeah, she was great. Everybody was great.

The score for the movie was done by James Newton Howard who managed to create an atmospheric, creepy, suspense-building and beautiful score that has lingered in my mind ever since the movie wrapped up, it is that great.

This movie was directed by M. Night Shyama-Lama-Ding-Dong, sorry… Shyamalan. And he did a great job with it, perfectly building tension and never revealing too much of anything in the movie. He did a fantastic job directing the movie. He also did the writing for the movie which I also thought was pretty great.

This movie has been very well-received over the years. On Rotten Tomatoes it has an 85% positive rating with a “Fresh” certification. On Metacritic it has a score of 64/100. Roger Ebert gave the movie 3/4 stars. And on imdb.com it has a score of 8,2/10 and is ranked #161 on the “Top 250” list. The movie was also nominated for 6 Oscars in the categories of Best PIcture, Best Supporting Actor (Osment), Best Supporting Actress (Collette), Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best Film Editing.

Guys, “The Sixth Sense” is an awesome movie with a tense and beautiful story, great characters/acting, excellent music, great direction, great writing and one of the best twists in cinema. Time for my final score. AH! Dead person! Oh, it’s just Jeff. Envelope. Thank you. My final score for “The Sixth Sense” is a 9,88/10. It definitely gets the “SEAL OF APPROVAL!”.

Review of “The Sixth Sense” is completed.

Shyama-Lama-Ding-Dong…