[ Home ] [ Up ]

banner2.jpg (44432 bytes)

Sixth Sense

Director: M. Night Shyamalan 

Genre: Drama/Thriller

Tag Line: Not every gift is a blessing.

Cast:

Bruce Willis: Malcolm Crowe

Haley Joel Osment: Cole Sear

Toni Collette: Lynn Sear

Olivia Williams: Anna Crowe

Donnie Wahlberg: Vincent Grey

My Review

This Intense Supernatural thriller was and is one of the most cleverly constructed films to have been showcased to us over the past few years.  The script is excellent along with an acting cast who have won many honours and are going to win many honours.

Bruce Willis plays Malcolm Crowe, a married man whose life has changed for the worse since a shooting incident involving an ex-patient.   He becomes self obsessed and only cares for his work, when one day an intriguing child enters his life.  At first the child seems to be a little ‘strange’.  He wears glasses with no lenses and plays by himself, concocting imaginary role-playing games only a genius could think of. 

Child prodigy Hayley Joel Osment, who you will have seen earlier as Forrest Gump’s son, plays the child who has a strange secret.  Doctors think his mother is abusing him, yet his mother believes his so-called friends are bullying him.

The film slowly introduces us to the Childs problems in a way, which sends shivers down your spine.  The child with the whole in his head, the vomiting girl all create sickening images which startle you while u are watching. 

The films central supernatural theme is played and directed well by M. Night Shyalaman, who pulls the seams together with so much precision.  His use of music can be soothing yet chilling; the lighting effects can be warm and then cold.  The images which are being thrown at us give us clues all the way through yet subtly enough to keep the secret until the final moment, a moment which I must admit I had never thought possible. 

This film relies mainly on the biggest twist so if u have never seen this film – Don’t Ask anyone about it.  Keep quiet until you have seen this film, as you don’t want to know.  I’m warning you!! 

This film must be watched under the littlest light possible.  All windows must be closed and any form of disturbance removed.  Simply sit back, enjoy, take in and marvel at an amazing film.  I cannot wait for his next movie ‘Unbreakable’ also starring Bruce Willis.

Alternate Endings

A clip featured on one of the films trailers wasn't featured in the final print of the film. The scene shows Bruce Willis stepping off a sidewalk just managing to escape being run over by a truck.

The following Scenes were deleted from the final print yet are featured in the segments of the DVD edtion.

·        Cole visits a German old man that had lost his wife a long time ago and is lonely. Cole finds some diaries that belonged to his wife and the old man becomes happy.

·        After Malcolm hears a voice on the tape recorder he goes back to the old man's house to see if he is doing better, which he is.

·        Cole playing with his toys: two are underneath a red cloth, Malcom asks Cole why and Cole gives him the men's name, rank, why they were there, and information about their wives.

·        Extended ending: after Malcolm is gone, the camera pans from Anna to the television featuring Malcolm on video expressing his love for her.

Trivia

This is the second movie with Bruce Willis in a leading role where one of the main characters is named "Cole," whom nobody believes and is considered to be insane or unusual. The other was Twelve Monkeys. Also, both movies have a number in the title.
Writer/director M. Night Shyamalan says he was dead set against casting an L.A. kid in the pivotal part of Cole. So he wasn't prepared to be totally blown away when 11-year-old Hollywood veteran Haley Joel Osment read for the part. Osment has been acting since he first appeared in a TV ad for Pizza Hut at age 5. He was Forrest Junior in Forrest Gump and he's appeared on TV shows like Murphy Brown (he was Murphy's son Avery), The Larry Sanders Show, and Ally McBeal. Osment won points for revealing he'd read the script through twice (anyone who's seen the movie can imagine why!). Incidentally, Shyamalan appears in a cameo as a doctor who suspects child abuse when he finds scratches on Cole.
M. Night Shyamalan says he based the character of Cole on his own childhood experience. No, the writer/director didn't see dead people, but he did sense their presence and admits to being terrified by odd noises and strange feelings that someone was there whenever he was left "alone" at home. This "sixth sense" wasn't lost; it's carried into his adult life, he says. His initial attempts to script the story fell flat and seemed like horror flick rehashes until he realized the dead people needed to be characters in their own right. Once he realized that they had issues and problems just like normal people, the rest of the script just fell into place.
One of the problems working with child actors is they tend to reach a burn-out point. When this happens, they may lose interest in doing the movie and even forget how to act effectively. This happened with Haley Joel Osment during the last few days of shooting, according to writer/director M. Night Shyamalan. While doing some pick-up shots of Cole on the day after Bruce Willis wrapped, Shyamalan noticed that Osment was faking his fear. He tried working with the young actor to find more effective ways of conveying the emotion, but finally decided to work around the problem by shooting over the boy's shoulder. These shots appear in the finished movie
M. Night Shyamalan says he plays a doctor in his cameo appearance as a bit of a gag, because his parents and most of his relatives are doctors - and he's not. He chose the locale of Philadelphia for two reasons. For one thing, it's one of the oldest towns in the U.S. so it makes sense that it's crawling with spirits. Also, it's his hometown, so he knew it from top to bottom and was able to make good use of locations. Plus, he was able to sleep in his own bed and have a short commute to the set each day
The script that sold for $3 million was the tenth draft. It actually went for a million more than M. Night Shyamalan predicted, although half of the difference was his directing fee. Needless to say, the first draft was very different. In it, Malcolm wasn't a child psychiatrist but a crime scene photographer. One day, he attends a Parent's Day event at his child's school. While smoking illicitly in the hall, he notices a strange piece of crayon art on the wall: a star image that matches a design he's seen on a certain serial killer's victims. When he looks at the back of the picture, he finds that his own son drew it. Yes, his son sees dead people - in particular, the dead people slain by a particular serial killer. Shyamalan says he scrapped the serial killer concept because it had been done, and he became fascinated by the aspects of the story he'd never seen before
The opening scene in the wine cellar throws a lot of people. In the script, Anna's breath is actually visible, but in the movie it's not until the final scene that she breathes mist. M. Night Shyamalan says he shot the scene in the basement with Anna's breath visible but cut it because it was "too much awareness, too soon." Instead, Anna simply shivers and rushes upstairs with the bottle of wine. OK, so what causes her to shiver? In the writer/director's mind, Anna has a bit of the sixth sense, though not nearly as much as Cole. She can't see dead people, but she has an awareness. As the movie begins, Vincent Gray - like Cole, a magnet for dead people - has already entered the house upstairs. So have his friends from beyond, and Anna senses them. The bit was intended to signal that Anna senses a change in the house. Now you know.
The script that sold, dated September 12, 1997, was greenlighted "as is," with no mandatory rewrites. Still, writer/director M. Night Shyamalan did one more draft and made additional changes in the editing of the film. One such edit was the removal of a scene where Cole takes Malcolm to see Mr. Marschal, an old man with a German accent who says his wife is out at the store. Cole asks for a drink in German, which pleases the man. As the three go into his house, Cole reveals in a whisper to Malcolm that Mrs. Marchal died some time ago. Malcolm watches Cole's behavior with interest. The boy seems fascinated by a large potted plant that's shivering in the breeze. Cole puts down his lemonade and pushes the pot aside, revealing an air vent. Inside the vent is a collection of diaries. Cole takes the books to Mr. Marschal, who notes that they belong to his wife. After thumbing to the end of the last one, the man announces, "She hasn't written anything in a long time." After a moment, his eyes fill with tears as he realizes she's left him for good. The scene gives Malcolm the tools for freeing Cole from his fear, and it eerily reflects his own relationship with his wife. It was cut because it's too similar to the third act scene that resolves Cole's conflict.
Like most movies with interesting twists, it's fun to go back and look for clues once you know what the surprise is. Some of the scenes with dual interpretations were written differently than they were delivered on screen. For instance, in the much studied anniversary dinner scene, the script has Malcolm saying, "Happy Anniversary." In fact, writer/director M. Night Shyamalan originally gave him all the lines in this scene. In the film, the line was given to Anna, which created an illusion of interaction between them. On second viewing, you might also haved noticed that Malcolm doesn't move the chair when he sits down at the table. A well-placed sideward glance by Anna toward Malcolm's eyeline completes the illusion that she's aware of his presence.
Writer/director M. Night Shyamalan says he made an almost fatal error in translating his script to screen: He paid less attention to the scenes he thought were strongest than the ones he felt weren't perfect on the page. He figured the great scenes were taken care of, while the rest needed work. As a result, he found himself in the cutting room forced to trim the final scene of the movie, which he had thought played perfectly on the printed page. Here's what happens in the script: After the big reveal, when Anna goes to sleep and we see she's really alone in the living room, the camera moves in on the television that's still showing the wedding video. We pay off the Dr. Seuss joke planted in the first scene as a drunken Malcolm, armed with a glass of wine, starts to give a rhyming speech. After the wedding crowd laughs at his lighthearted patter ("today has been one very special day, I wish we call could stay and play"), he becomes serious and addresses Anna. He tells her about his strong feelings for her and then ends on another Dr. Seuss-ism: "Anna Crowe... I am in love. In love I am." The scene, as it was shot, came off sad and, due to Shyamalan's inattention, didn't fit with the scene that preceded it. The moment should have been more uplifting, mirroring the emotional breakthrough he makes with the prior scene's revelation, he explained. It didn't work that way, so Shyamalan replaced it with a simple shot of Malcolm and Anna dancing.

Sources - Script Vault