The Sixth Sense | Mr Luke Shepherd

THE SIXTH SENSE
Cert. 15. 127 minutes
Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Last Saturday evening, with nothing much else to do, I called up a friend and we went to the cinema together. I do this occasionally, and generally it's a pleasant evening.

'Sixth Sense' has been much hyped, and I went with a fair sense of expectation - but even so, the film surprised and delighted me.

The apparent subject matter is people who are dead, and the terrible burden of one nine-year-old boy who can see the ghosts of those with 'unfinished' business. It sounds like a bad subject, I know - but, in fact, I'm not at all sure it is the subject.

I suspect it's just a storyline, and what we're really looking at is childhood - the vulnerability, the guilelessness, the gentleness, the pain and the fear that are often the peculiar province of children. I was trying to see the best in the film, and my assessment may well be a little sentimental, even a little mawkish - but I suspect that anyone who remembers real pain in their own youth, and who has not hardened their heart in response, would feel moved by this helpless and pathetic (in the kind sense) boy as he struggles with things most people never have to deal with.

Tender hearts

The young actor is extraordinary, portraying with a vividness and potency emotions that would elude the majority of adult movie stars. And here's the real surprise; one of those very same movie stars, Bruce Willis, is really good in the support as the tender, big-hearted child psychologist who helps our 'hero' overcome his own fear to do others good. There are moments in this film of such pathos and heart, it is a bittersweet joy to watch them.

But there are also moments of brilliant, startling intensity; the kind of heart-stopping, mind-jolting, jerk-you-from-your-seat shock that you expect to find in horror movies and thrillers. It is testimony to the quality of this film that it pulls together elements usually associated with widely disparate genres and weaves them seamlessly and beautifully together.

It leaves you with serious food for thought - and the pleasure of watching this film is only half done when you walk out of the auditorium.

If you like a movie with heart, with great acting and with no sense of its own importance - a movie that sets out to entertain more than to impress; if you can stomach a few disturbing images and a couple of nasty moments tastefully and appropriately used; and if you're sick of gratuitous violence, profanity and sex in most of what Hollywood churns out - well, if that's the case, this might just be the film for you.