71. Haley Joel Osment (The Sixth Sense)

71. When I first saw The Sixth Sense, I was fifteen, and it was Summer. That meant no access to the Internet (what dark and dank times those were) and no access to Entertainment Weekly (literally my movie almanac up until I hit nineteen). Therefore, I had no idea that there was any hoopla surrounding The Sixth Sense. I mean, I'd heard it was good, but that twist (which I guessed, and will certainly not tell here), wasn't something that I was necessarily expecting going in.

Something else I wasn't expecting going in was the supreme performance by child wonder Haley Joel Osment (see also Number 80 in this countdown). His Cole was a gifted individual, capable of great, thought-provoking sentences and one undeniably affective catch phrase. The looks of sheer terror, and also of the unknown and known in his perceptions of death is startling. Yes, the twist is terrific, as are Toni Collette and Bruce Willis, but without Osment's tour de force, this would have been as standard as every other M. Night Shyamalan film.

When I think Haley, I immediately go to Dakota Fanning, so I'd check out her wide-eyed turn in War of the Worlds as a companion to this (just try not to be sucked into Tom Cruise's scientology vortex).