No Survivors - The utter wreckage caused by Pay It Forward...

Any number of movies can bomb critically and commercially to the extent that they harm the star or director or even the writer involved with the respective project.  But, 13.5 years later, the utter carnage reaped by Pay It Forward remains impressive and perhaps unprecedented.  Yes the movie wasn't very good and yes it didn't make very much money at the box office.  But the impressive thing about Pay It Forward, a would-be Oscar bait drama released in October of 2000, is how brutally it crushed the careers of pretty much all of its major players, inflicting wounds that have only just now started to wear off.  The film was considered a major player prior to its release. starring recent Academy Award winners Kevin Spacey, Helen Hunt, and Oscar nominee (and shoulda-been winner) Haley Joel Osment. It was helmed by Mimi Leder, fresh off the blockbuster success of Deep Impact. The film was not a critical darling, getting savaged by critics to such a degree that many outright spoiled the film's kinda-sorta twist ending purely out of spite.  And it was not a box office success either, earning just $55 million worldwide off a $40 million budget.  But more importantly, the negative reaction to the film was so severe that it iced the white-hot buzz around all of its primary players.

Because the twist was beside the point... What those who've ripped off The Sixth Sense over the last twelve years have gotten wrong about its finale.

With Dream House opening today, sans press screenings, audiences will get a chance to discover, if they choose, just how much of the film has been spoiled by the trailer.  Early reviews indicate that the movie is both stunningly boring and basically a hodge-podge of classic twist ending cliches.  While it's fashionable to blame The Sixth Sense for the last ten years of last-minute 'gotchas!', the would-be thrillers that have followed in M. Night Shyamalan's footsteps missed a crucial distinction.  The last minute reveal that closes The Sixth Sense isn't really the finale of the film.  It's not a big zinger that the entire movie revolves around.  The movie, at its core, is a human drama about a troubled young boy and his struggling single mother.  With painfully good work by Haley Joel Osment and Toni Collette (both of whom damn-well should have won Oscars) and a genuinely sympathetic and thoughtful screenplay by M. Night in his prime, the climactic reveal, and really all of the supernatural material is merely a means to an end.  It is, to paraphrase one of the film's last lines, always second to the heartbreaking human drama.  The movie doesn't climax with the revelation about Bruce Willis's ultimate fate.  It truly climaxes one scene earlier, as mother and son finally open up to each other and reach an understanding that will truly strengthen their relationship.  The emphasis on character over thrills and chills is among a handful of reasons why The Sixth Sense is still a masterpiece and one of the best films of the 1990s.  The scene above, the true finale to The Sixth Sense, is probably the best thing M. Night Shyamalan has ever filmed, and it is one of the main reasons I still haven't given up on him.

Scott Mendelson