The Sixth Sense

M. Night Shyamalan made one really good movie (this one), one okay movie (Unbreakable), and everything else his hand has touched has been garbage. Yes, I can see that most of his movies have made money, and some have even been critical successes, but they have all been stupid, as he tried over and over to duplicate the “twist ending” success of this one, and never again really played fair with the audience. I thought Signs was maybe the worst recent SF film I ever saw, relying completely on idiot ideas, and actually taking seriously the totally debunked phenomenon of crop circles. They are pranks, you moron! It also repeated the imbecilic idea, first seen in Alien Nation, that aliens who catch on fire when they contact water would be eager to come to a planet whose surface is ¾ water, and where the deadly stuff regularly condenses out of the atmosphere. Why not land on the sun instead? It would be just as stupid.

But this one is a doozy. I’m not going to put spoilers in here, on the off chance that you haven’t seen it. It is even better on a second viewing, because now that you know what’s going on, you will see things that you never noticed the first time through. I have to say that it totally, completely blind-sided me. I didn’t have an inkling of what was happening right in front of my eyes. And M. Night played totally fair with us, even bending over backwards to include some things that the producer thought might give the show away. Maybe it did to some people, but not me. And I love that. I don’t mind being hoodwinked, as long as you don’t cheat! And damn him, ever since this film all he has done is cheat.