Review:

If you have somehow managed to do the impossible and not have the ending ruined for you, I encourage you to see The Sixth Sense as soon as you can. Even though I wasn't lucky enough to get an unsoiled experience, The Sixth Sense was a masterpiece of storytelling. Being marketed as a horror movie is certainly a disservice to this film. It's a beautiful drama that happens to have some horror elements. The acting is perfect, except for Willis who I have yet to see deliver an above average performance. The biggest surprise was how well Haley Joel Osment was. After I disentangled Osment from Johnathan Lipnicki, I really only had AI to go on and that was a much different performance. I bought everything that Osment was selling. He was 11 when this was filmed and his performance isn't just good for a child actor, it's legitimately amazing. The other standout performance is Toni Collette. I didn't recognize her, probably because I had only seen her in Hereditary which is twenty years after this film, but I should have as the characters have quite a few similarities. I'd even argue that Collette is better here, as her performance was a lot more grounded. The only things stopping The Sixth Sense from being a perfect movie were Bruce Willis and some obvious logistical issues that one would pay more attention to on a rewatch. Although they do well with their "rules" there are things that characters just wouldn't know. It's a minor thing that the average amount or suspension of disbelief would cover, but that and Bruce Willis's unconvincing performance bothered me too much. I had pretty low expectations for The Sixth Sense, but it masterfully hit all the right notes and the film actually affected me, which is rare. I may have shed a tear in the last fifteen minutes and it's hard to get that out of me.