Starring Bruce Willis, Haley Joel Osment and Toni Collette. Rated M.

THE 6th SENSE is a psychological thriller in which eight-year-old Cole Sear (Osment) is haunted by a dark secret. He sees dead people walking around like regular people. Some of them don't even know they are dead.

Cole is nothing more than a helpless and reluctant channel for these tortured souls. He is terrified by their threatening visits. Their unresolved torment is as real for him as it is for the ghosts.

Cole is too terrified to tell anyone about his torment -- and with good reason. He is taunted and ostracised as a freak amongst his peers.

Child psychologist Dr. Malcolm Crowe (Willis) comes to the kids rescue. He takes the case through a sense of guilt after failing to relieve similar torment for another, much older, client who eventually blew his own head off in Crowe's bathroom. Obviously the road to recovery is not quite as simple as that. First the doctor must win the trust of the young lad. When finally Cole reveals his secret, Dr Crowe prepares a plan of attack for the delusional mental disease -- drugs, hospitalisation and therapy. It took quite some time for the doc to come to the startling and career-changing conclusion that the kid wasn't mad after all and was actually tormented by ghosts. Ghosts like the teenage daughter of Mr and Mrs Average Suburbia.

Dr Crowe advises Cole that, in his opinion, the only way to stop the torment would be to listen to the ghost and see what he can do to help. With this in mind, and no less terrified he confronts the teenage daughter and follows her will, disclosing a hidden video tape which fingered Mrs Average Suburbia for poisoning her own daughter.

Following this first success, Cole actually falls into a routine of talking and helping the ghosts and begins to lose his freakish demeanour among his peers.

Success at last for Dr Crowe, doing for Cole what he failed to do for the older client.