The Sixth Sense

What to make of "The Sixth Sense"? Superficially, initially, it comes across as an updated variation on "E.T.". But look again and see it isn't. See that it is a thriller. But look again and see it is not a thriller as defined in contemporary terms.

Look again, though, and see it isn't really a thriller. It is a ghost story. The sort of ghost story that the late Sir Alfred Hitchcock might have made years ago, before special effects and stunts and pyrotechnics dominated the silver screen. The sort of ghost story in which people--average people--caught glimpses of dimensions at the edge of the senses. Specifically, the sixth sense.

Hence the title: "The Sixth Sense".

There is a belief that when we are young this sense allows us to experience, in fleeting bits, these dimensions. And what resides there.

"I see dead people," says Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment), in a session with his psychologist. Then he adds, very melodramatically, "They want me to do things for them."

But I get ahead of the plot. The set-up: The psychologist is Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis), who is shot one night, in his home, by a man who had been a patient of his years before, and who believes he was not properly treated, and who wants some form of revenge, justice.

Once justice is had--shooting Crowe--the man turns the gun on himself.

'The next fall', we are told by subtitles, Crowe has mended himself in body but not in spirit or mind, and in an attempt to do so he takes on a new case, a new patient, the aforementioned Cole Sear, who carries some of the same characteristics and problems as the man who shot Crowe.

Maybe Crowe can address the matter properly this time, and get the conclusion right this time.

Not much of a story this. Not much of a ghost story. But patience, please.

Cole returns home. His mother, Lynn (Toni Collette), a single, working woman, is there. Tired, she leaves Cole alone in the kitchen for but a moment, and returns to find all the doors and drawers open.

Unnerved, she thinks it is merely a prank by a boy who wants attention he may or may not deserve.

But that, as we will learn quickly, isn't quite the reality. At school Cole tells his teacher things he shouldn't know. How people were hung in the school, how the teacher, when he was a boy, was called 'Stuttering Stanley'.

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