IT SEEMS LIKE ALL THE RAGE TO KNOCK THE SIXTH SENSE AS OVER-RATED. This is understandable owing to the extreme lauditory laurels that critics and filmgoers lavished on the film at the time. I saw the film in the theatre on it's initial release in 1999 and then a year or less later when it came on HBO or some such. I admit to being of much the same mind on my second viewing; it's good but not as great as everybody is yelling about. Of course, by that time everyone had stopped yelling. After all, my own opinion as well as conventional wisdom went, after you know the "twist ending" there's really no way you can sit through it again. Granted, the "twist ending" was terrific; and I don't really believe half of the people who swear they guessed it at the beginning of the film are being entirely truthful. I will admit that I guessed it but only about 5 or 10 minutes before the reveal. And this didn't detract from my finishing the movie. But as I said, was there really a point in sitting through the movie again after knowing it? Subsequently, I saw Shyamalan's follow-up UNBREAKABLE which I also quite liked. That's as far as I went; I haven't seen any more of his films and, from the vehement lambasting I've read about them I was never in any hurray to correct that oversight and the opportunity to see any of them hasn't come up.

So, yesterday on one of the umpteen pay channels I get on digital cable which I rarely if ever watch, THE SIXTH SENSE was playing. And after the better part of a decade, I thought I would watch it. After all, I 've seen it before and I can easily turn it off if it gets to be too heavy-going. Imagine my surprise when I found that the movie holds up quite well; much better than I remembered from my last HBO viewing many years ago. In fact, I would urge everyone who hasn't seen it for many years to give it a try. But the way to watch it is not with the thought in your mind that "I know the twist ending"; what movie could hope to still be enjoyable when the viewer goes in with that thought in mind. It may come as some surprise (it did to me) that the "twist ending" doesn't matter in the slightest and, in a funny way, is not the point of the movie upon repeat viewings. The point of the movie rather is the interrelationships between the characters, some damn fine dialogue and deft, intriguing and inventive directing. Then there's the cast: Toni Collette and Haley Joel Osment are superb and, yes, even Bruce Willis is about the best you're ever likely to see him. Collette and Osment as mother and son really are remarkable and the scene between them in the car when Cole tells his mother that the dead grandmother says hi actually choked me up. I love a movie that can make me cry and this scene did it for me. The pacing and emotional build of the picture is expertly handled so that we really feel what these people are going through. In fact, I now view the "ghost" elements of the film as incidental to the film. In a funny way, I was reminded of Val Lewton's similar "CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE" in that both deal with the world and emotional conflicts of a child and his/her family while a "horror genre" subplot may or may not be going on to cause it. I was also reminded of the recently discussed "THE DEVIL'S BACKBONE" on Weaverman's FLEAPIT OF THE MIND blog in which the children's story and conflicts in the orphanage are the real reason to see that movie and the "ghost" angle is merely an appendage to it. However, I do think the "ghost" sequences in THE SIXTH SENSE work much better than those in THE DEVIL'S BACKBONE (released a mere 2 years after THE SIXTH SENSE). It's just that now I realize the ghosts are not there to scare anybody; they are in fact characters in the movie too and should be looked at that way. So yes, my estimation of THE SIXTH SENSE has considerably risen with this latest re-viewing. It's the people, the acting, the direction and the writing which is well worth spending time with and will still remain rewarding long after the so-called "surprise" is known.