The Sixth Sense

With his third feature effort, writer/director M. Night Shyamalan has taken a huge step in the wrong direction. After showing great strides of maturity between his ineffective debut, Praying with Anger, and 1998's appealing Wide Awake, Shyamalan has backslided alarmingly with The Sixth Sense. While this picture shares many qualities with Wide Awake (a child protagonist, a central spiritual theme, and being set in Shyamalan's home city of Philadelphia), it's an inferior product. It is not well written, well acted, or well directed.

The Sixth Sense is obviously an attempt by Bruce Willis to broaden his range. The actor, best known for action roles in films like Die Hard, has effectively explored a few dramatic parts in the past (most notably in In Country), but this may be the first time he has consciously attempted to essay a low-key persona. It doesn't work. Only in the first scene does Willis exhibit any life; after that, he has a tendency to fade into the background. Part of the problem is undoubtedly that his character is badly written, but there's also a distinct lack of energy in the performance

There are undoubtedly those who will enjoy The Sixth Sense simply because of the spiritual angle, which tries to say something about the connection between this world and the next one. Today's society has an undeniable fascination with supernatural/pseudo-religious issues. (Is there any other way to explain the success of pabulum like TV's "Touched by an Angel"?) But, unlike in movies such as What Dreams May Come, this motion picture is saddled with a murky, unimaginative vision. At its best, it's merely competent; at it's worst, it has a movie making-by