I finally got around to seeing The Sixth Sense.
Before I tear it up, let me say two things:
The kid will win an Oscar for his perfomance and I didn't let Bruce's
politics affect my opinion.
I paid to see this movie, I wanted to like it.
Mrs. BartCop wanted to see The Haunting,
but I told her this was supposed to be more scary.
Ok, here we go.
The movie, starring Bruce Willis, cheats.
Let's start at the beginning.
The kid sees dead people.
My first question is, what are the rules?
The rules?
Yeah, the rules.
Does he see all the dead people in the history of the universe?
Does he just see the ones who died violently?
Is it geography based - he only sees people who died where he's standing?
It's a totally bogus premise.
You know me, I'm a scientist.
I don't buy any of that angels/devils, Heaven/Hell horseshit
the heartless people use
to separate the sick and the old from their hard-earned life savings.
This kid is in Philadelphia, so if he's seeing all the people
who ever died in Philly,
he's seeing tens of thousands of dead people in every directions.
Koresh, some intersections could have a hundred bodies.
Philly is a very old city.
Second, he can obviously read minds.
When he tormented that teacher, he read his mind to humiliate him.
This is a great plot device, but that's the only time he ever used
it.
Why?
I thought that's where the movie was going.
He could've run into the school bully and said,
"Do you still wet your pants like you did
at your Grandma's funeral?"
When he ran into his demons, he could humiliate them into leaving.
If you can read minds, you can have a great script, but noooooooo.
If I could read minds, I'd torment my enemies till they ate their gun.
If I could read minds, you'd have a great movie.
I thought they spent entirely too much time on the kid's demons.
It didn't further the story to show every fear the poor kid had.
Plus, it was ambush directing.
How many women go through a house in the dark without turning on the
lights?
That's just too stupid to swallow.
Third, the dead little girl who contacted him.
How do dead kids get around?
We've got more rules violations here.
First, she's in his tent.
Then, she's under her bed, pointing out the location of the videotape.
How did she get from his house to her house?
The Ghoul Express?
Why didn't she just tell him where the goddamn tape was in the first
place?
That would've saved a lot of time.
Who made the tape?
The little girl?
The little dying girl sets up a camcorder in her room and taped her
mother poisoning her?
If she knew Mom was poisoning her, why did she eat the damn
soup?
Objection!
You can't have science fiction without the rules.
Even in the old Superman comics when I was a kid, Mr. Myxyktpl had
to go
home for 90 days if Superman tricked him into saying his name backwards.
You see?
That's a rule.
Same thing for werewolf movies?
Do werewolves fear silver bullets?
Or is that vampires?
What about mirrors and garlic?
Does that go for werewolves and vampires, both?
What about the undead?
Which rules apply?
It changes every movie.
And then you have my all-time favorite, The Exorcist.
Talk about no rules...
If the devil wanted to cause misery, why not simply possess the president's
daughter?
That way, you could trick him into launching the nukes, thereby creating
worldwide panic and destruction, which is the Devil's goal, right?
Why torment some actress when you can torment 6 billion souls?
One other thing about The Exorcist before we get back to Bruce
Willis's cheating.
If I, BartCop, was a priest in that movie, I would've whipped out my
Tom Delay and told the Devil to "Eat me."
I would've looked the Devil in the eye and said,"Look
here, Hornboy. My God is the King of Kings,
the Ruler of the Universe. My God is the Father
of Israel and the Creator of Heaven and Earth.
My God commands all that is, and you're nothing
but a girly-wimp wannabe.
You have to be the ugly Devil because you
squat to pee.
My God gives me the power to laugh in your
face, you shit-for-brains.
My God gives me the power to piss all over
you.
My God is real, and you Sir, are no Jack Kennedy."
But noooooooooooooo.
Those priests went into Regan's room more scared than that no-debate
coward at rushonline.com
They went in wimpering and hoping to get out with their lives.
When the Devil made that drawer pop out, I would've laughed and said,
"Hey, Hornboy, is that your very best trick?
ha ha
My God created the mountains and
the oceans and the stars and the Internet.
You pop a fucking drawer out and I'm
supposed to be impressed?
ha ha
That shit might work on the Quayle-for-brains
losers you have trapped in Hell, but those
cheap parlor tricks don't mean shit
to someone who's on the same team as Jesus Christ,
so why don't you take your loser-ass
back home before I call on Him to use His powers
to kick your puny ass back there
for
you?"
Then, ...then God lets the Devil kill Father Marin.
Thanks, God.
Gee, I'm sure that gave Father Damien something to think about.
If I'm a priest, and I see God sacrifice my mentor,
I'm going to get a little squeamish wondering if I'm on the right team.
...Sorry, but I've waited 20 years to get that off my chest.
What's the point of dedicating your life to God if you're going to
wet your pants in panic
the first time the Devil shows up to fuck with your head?
If I'm a priest, and the Devil shows up, that mother-effer's
going to
have a Tyson-sized fight on his hands he didn't count on.
All this goes back to the issue of Rules!
You have to have rules or you might as well be reading the Bible.
sigh...
Back to The Sixth Sense...
This could've been a great movie with the kid reading minds and
seeing certain dead people, whatever the rules allow.
Wait, remember the movie with Denzel Washington (Fallen)
with the song "Time is on my side,"
by the Rolling Stones?
Same problem - no rules.
In that movie, the Devil could jump from person to person.
To outwit the Devil, Denzel had the Devil jump into him,
then he committed suicide when nobody else was around.
Since nobody else was around, what... the Devil had to go home for 90 days?
Denzel fucked up and murdered himself for no goddamn reason!
The Devil had the power to jump into a fly, or a flea, or a gnat,
or, for all we know, a damn microbe flying in the air, so it was impossible
to trap the Devil, because Denzel didn't know the rules!!
OK, here comes the big closer-
In the Sixth Sense, the big scene at the end,
the big scene where the awful truth is revealed is a damn hoax!
The big secret is that the kid can only see Bruce because Bruce is
DEAD!
Bruce is dead?
Objection!
Bruce didn't know he was dead?
The way they tried to sell us this ripoff was this:
The entire movie, the kid is the ONLY ONE who ever spoke to Bruce after
he was shot.
That's supposed to cover Bruce's ignorance of his own death.
Objection!
Bruce was shot six months before he met the kid.
In those six months, Bruce never had a conversation with anyone?
Bruce didn't know he was dead?
Bruce never ate a meal in six months?
Bruce never went to the bathroom in six months?
Bruce never took off his coat and saw the blood, for six months?
He didn't change his clothes for six months?
Remember, all the other dead people had axes in their heads,
or poison running out their mouths, or a noose around their neck.
All the dead people were obviously dead, but they ambushed us like a
Limba
by portraying Bruce Willis as too goddamn stupid to know that
there must be
a reason why he wasn't eating, or defacating, or getting answers to
questions.
Bruce told the kid, "My wife hardly speaks
to me anymore."
Duh, ...maybe it's because
you're not there, Brucie!
Didn't you notice your wife never spoke to you once in six months?
How does a sane man overlook that little fact?
If nobody on the planet spoke to me or acknowledged my presence,
it wouldn't take six long months for Ol' BartCop to catch on.
I may have an IQ of 64, but I'm no Bruce Willis.
All in all, it wasn't the worst movie I've ever seen.
But I heard all the hoopla about this "great" movie, with the "super
surprise" ending,
but the only way the movie made sense is if the hero is too goddamn
stupid to
notice he hasn't taken his coat off in six months to see his fatal
stomach wound.
They spent tens of millions on this movie.
They could've spent another $500 and called Ol' BartCop for a reasonable
explanation
of why Bruce was too stupid to realize that nobody has spoken to him
for 6 months.
I'm not saying, "Don't see this movie."
I'm just disappointed they had a good idea and fucked it off.
Surely, you agree with every word, right?
...and if you want to challenge me on The Exorcist, you'd better
be Catholic.