'the Sixth Sense': Reflections from the Set

At the time of this writing no one else has bothered to write anything on the IMDb about this short documentary that accompanies the Vista Series of The Sixth Sense, although fans have certainly found it in their hearts to give it a whopping 3.4 collective vote. Why people voted it so low I can't imagine, because it delivers exactly what it offers, reflections from the set. All of the people who played the biggest roles in the film appear in this documentary, from M. Night Shyamalan and Toni Collette to Haley Joel Osment and Bruce Willis., to talk about their experiences in making the movie.

In pondering what might have caused so many people to give this documentary the lowest rating on the IMDb, I thought that maybe Donnie Wahlberg's interview might have had something to do with it, because he tells some pretty odd stories.

Shyamalan praises him for his dedication to a role of Vincent Gray, which would only entail about five minutes of screen time, and then Donnie Wahlberg gives a pretty extensive interview about how he went about preparing for the role. It turns out that he transformed his body in the same way Tom Hanks did for Cast Away. Not quite as extremely, but he did lose something like 25 pounds for the role, which is a tremendous amount for someone of his size.

He goes on to tell a strange story about going to the park with a friend a few days before shooting his scene, and he decided that his character wouldn't be able to do that, because he had no friends, so he took off and hid in the bushes until the early hours of the morning, and then got out and walked around for even longer, "just trying to exist."

And I thought to myself, What is this guy talking about, trying to exist? He already lost the weight, just say the lines! And then I thought to myself, wait a minute, I don't know how to act, who in the hell am I to criticize this guy's methods? Wahlberg delivered an outstanding performance and he deserves nothing but praise for it.

Speaking of which, all of the cast heap praise on each other, such as the way Bruce Willis praises how Shyamalan makes up stories out of his head rather than remaking old movies or TV shows from the 60s or something, how he's a great storyteller and whatnot. I don't really think that this is the cast and crew praising each other in hopes of doing business together in the future or to help themselves get hired in the future, but is a really natural reaction to having worked with people on a movie.

People praise each other on these documentaries even for bad movies or movies that were commercial failures, like Willard (which I thought was a very good movie) or Texas Chainsaw III. Whatever the case, they are really designed to give insight into the movie and, at least as importantly, to perhaps raise your opinion of the movie, even if you already loved it. It's hard to criticize a movie when you see how hard these people worked on it, and Reflections from the Set gives tremendous insight into the movie, which was already an amazing success, which is why it is so strange to me that people on the IMDb voted it so low. There was a tremendous amount of film-making talent that came together on this movie, and you can see it in this documentary just as much as in the movie.