Starring: Bruce Willis, Haley Josel Osment
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Studio: Hollywood Pictures 058260
Video: 1.85:1 widescreen, 1080p HD
Audio: English uncompressed 5.1 PCM (48K/16bit), English & French Dolby 5.1, Spanish DD 2.0
Subtitles: English SDH, French, Spanish
Extras: Deleted scenes, Reflections from the Set, Between Two Worlds, Moving Pictures: The Storyboard Process, Music & Sound Design, Reaching the Audience, Rules and Clues, Publicity
Length: 107 minutes
Rating: *****
This was one of the most successful films ever financially, and got many viewers discussing spiritual matters and “the other side” who had never broached the subjects before. One of the authorities in the many extras keeps referring to the film as a horror movie; I would never categorize it that way. I see it as one of the most thoughtful and fascinating psychological thrillers. Bruce Willis gets to do an entirely different sort of role from his action movies and is excellent at it, while the 11-year-old who plays Cole – the boy who “sees dead people,” is fully professional and believable.
Willis plays a distinguished child psychologist who befriends the frightened boy, working to gain his confidence until the boy finally reveals his painful secret to him. Together they have a number of intense and powerful experiences. The psychologist is making an effort to remedy his lack of success treating a previous young client who he didn’t really understand. This was probably the best film from Shyamalan, and his standard twist ending really works here – hitting most viewers with a double whammy.
The transfer is extremely variable, with some scenes coming across quite grainy, and little use is made of the surround field in the uncompressed PCM soundtrack. The bonus features come from the previous deluxe DVD and like it are just in 480i definition, with many repeated clips from the film which get tiresome if you try to view all the extras at once. I can’t imagine this film is that much poorer visually in the standard DVD version.
– John Sunier
