They say you need to see this
twice to fully appreciate it, because of the twist ending. Actually, I
needed to see it twice because my first attempt foundered in sleep during
the rather unpromising first hour, with characters reading plaques aloud to
each other in lieu of character development. Once child psychologist Willis gets child psychic
Osment to open up, however, things improve hugely, driven largely by
Osment's remarkably mature performance -- hard to see why the Oscars felt
he was merely a 'supporting actor'. Can't help wondering if Willis was
miffed to be out-acted by an 11-year old, although he still deserves credit
for a nicely restrained performance, especially by previous standards.
While I knew the twist beforehand, it didn't make much difference; indeed,
it probably just saves the aforementioned double-viewing. Not that I'd
mind: while I found neither concept nor execution that scary
(there's one cheap but effective fright), as a multi-faceted drama it works
very nicely.
B-
