Starring: Bruce Willis , Olivia Williams , Haley Joel Osment , Donnie Wahlberg and Toni Collette
Directed by M Night Shyamalan.
Produced by Sam Mercer and Kathleen Kennedy.
Written by M Night Shyamalan.

While some audiences may find "The Sixth Sense" boring and unexciting, I enjoyed the sad, dark atmosphere with its occasional subtle moments and surprises.

The performances of Bruce Willis and Haley Joel Osment are both powerful and convincing, especially the latter. (For those not in the know, he played the young Forrest Gump).

Unlike the boy in "Star Wars Episode 1" or in some other kid movies in which the kid actors play the roles which are like themselves in real life, Osment simply gave a brilliant performance as a boy haunted by 'hallucinations' of dead people; 'I see dead people'. Startlingly good as the afflicted innocent, the young boy manages to convey, in a truly unsettling way, his own tortured inner world. This is a finely crafted movie, I would call it a thinking man's horror film.

The entire film, which moves rather slowly, is the story of the trust that builds between Malcolm (Bruce Willis) and Cole (Haley Joel Osment). Cole's loving mother, Lynn (Toni Collette), heartbroken over his troubled soul, can't help him. Bruce Willis does a very good job to act with the boy; if he doesn't assume his character probably, it would be look like a big guy talking to a kid, instead of a man teaching and learning from a kid. Willis delivers a nicely restrained performance that complements the film's mood effectively.

There aren't any big car chases or gunfights in this film (you almost always expect that from Bruce Willis), but instead what you will find is large doses of suspense and the supernatural, plus a few stunning surprises along the way. There are many surprises in the story; however, they're all revealed in a quiet manner. The director does quite a good job to keep the suspense on hold for a while and slowly plays out the surprise confidently.

What earns the movie its success is the way it lingers in your mind. The now heralded surprise twist at the end is not contrived, but a perfectly logical culmination of the interaction of the various threads that have been put before us. The best part is that we didn't recognize the process. We have been manipulated with great care. You may well be half way home before you begin to fully appreciate the cunning of writer-director M. Night Shyamalan.