Wonderfully offbeat film!

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

***SPOILERS*** It's when young New Orleans attorney Emily Parker, Anne Heche, got an engagement ring from her soon to be husband, whom she only knew for about a month, Billy Boy Hytner, Jonathan Lapagila, that the dead or murdered of long ago were suddenly awakened. It wasn't long that Emily started seeing things in the form of this ghost-like woman who started making ghostly appearances only to her everywhere she went! As it turned out it was the engagement ring that was the reason behind all these strange events in Emily's life. That together with Emily having been institutionalized at an early age, after her parents were tragically killed in a car accident, which somehow had her become psychic because of her mental illness and be able to pick up vibrations as well as images of dead people!As Emily gets clues from her contact from the world beyond she soon finds out that the person is the disembodied sprite of Marie Slanger, Leigh Jones, who disappeared back in 1969 with only her ring finger and engagement ring being recovered in the woods by a teenage couple who were, this at the hight of the free love era, busy making out! The biggest surprise comes much later when Emily in uncovering a photo of her future mother-in-law the boozy, and she is for a good reason, Beth Hytner, Kathleen Quinlan, which has her and Marie Salnger in it!Emily following the clues that the ghostly Marie is giving her tracks down her former lover the former flower and love child, now in his early 60's, Paul Hamlin, Chris Sarandon, who was the prime suspect in her death or disappearance! Having been let off the hook by a jury because of lack of evidence Paul has lived with the suspicion by everyone involved in his murder case that he got a lucky break in that Marie's body was never found.***MAJOR SPOILERS*** It when Emily sees the reclusive Paul that she realizes there's a reason that Marie's ghost guided her to him. It was through Paul that Emily connected the dead Marie to her fiancée's parents! In fact it was Billy Boy's old man John Hytner, David Andrews, who was getting it on hot and heavy with Marie back in the late 1960's just before she disappeared! Something that Mr.Hytner's old lady Beth knew about and was the reason for her having hit the bottle ever since!Pretty good made for TV movie with an outstanding performance by Anne Heche good enough for her to have gotten an Academedy Award nomination, if the film was theatrically released, as Emily Parker the girl with the sixth sense! The ability to see dead people! The only thing about the film that let it down a notch or two was the what looked like 30 or so year-old Billy Boy Hytner parents John & Beth Hytner! They were so young looking that you could have easily mistaken them for Billy Boy's brother and sister instead of his mom and dad!

Like a previous reviewer, I really wanted to like this movie. I tuned in because the promos mentioned James Van Praagh as the source for the storyline, and I was hoping to get some good and intelligent treatment of spirit communication.What a letdown.This was the same IL' thriller that almost totally ignores the real story, the story that should be told, the life after death story. I have seen very few movies that have the guts to go beyond the ordinary "bang-bang you're dead" plot and focus on what happens to the murder victim after the funeral.James Van Praagh has made a life (and one presumes a great living) out of talking to dead people, writing books about talking to dead people, and taking rich people on expensive cruises to exotic places where he talks to more dead people. That's cool for him, but I expected more out a movie about dead people that he produced.So why does this movie act like an ordinary yawner of a murder mystery that gives us absolutely diddly insight into the spirit of the victim? Couldn't we for once have a more intelligent treatment of this subject? If there are spirits, and as far as this movie was concerned, there are, then the spirit in this movie has a great story. She survived murder! So we really don't have to spend two hours in a melodrama to figure out who killed her. Let's get to the good stuff.What was murder like when she left her physical body? What happened when she realized that death was a transition, not a termination? What did she learn about being murdered after she realized that murder didn't kill her? I am so surprised that James Van Praagh gave his seal of approval to this annoying waste of time.

Doesn't anyone get tired of making these stupid movies? The ones where someone is contact by a ghost who was horribly murdered and this random person is expected to go throughout the picture, trying to convince people that she's been talking with this ghost and demands answers from total strangers (often neurotic strangers) who may know how she died or where her remains lie. It's a boilerplate story these days, and after the success and the thrills of the 'Sixth Sense,' is it really necessary to keep making these things? Kathleen Quinnlan, probably the only tolerable actress in the bunch (and Chris Sarandon as the widow of the dead girl) as the sinister mother-in-law-to-be were completely wasted in this predictable mess. Anne Heche, of course, took the lead and showed off her awful acting abilities as Emily Parker, host to the dead girl. The ending was pretty stupid. What a waste.

I wanted to like this movie. I did really. It tried hard. And why shouldn't CBS give us a spooky Sunday movie near Halloween? Still, with a feminine heroine in a new marriage, learning another family's secrets, it just seemed reminiscent of a classic Gothic novel (maybe it should have been a period piece - naw, everyone thinks those cost too much).There's a real effort in the direction to give an unsettling atmosphere, but it had a little too much quick cutting (to keep people interested who have short attention spans?). Anne Heche gives a more honest and effective performance than other actresses that might have opted for this project. But many in the cast - such as Christopher Guest and Jonathan LaPaglia - are playing characters that were not written with much originality. The plot makes sense, and there are the obligatory scenes of hallucination. Nice set design and photography. Yet Kathleen Quinlan and David Andrews seemed too young to be playing Jonathan La Paglia's parents.A distraction, a good effort, not bad - but not much that's different.If you like ghost movies with a murder mystery like this I suggest:David Koepp's "Stir of Echoes" (1999) with Kevin Bacon - based on Richard Matheson's novel (overshadowed because it was released near the same time as The Sixth Sense) or Sam Raimi's "The Gift" (2000) co-written by Billy Bob Thorton - the unexpectedly solid performances from a rather varied group of actors - Cate Blanchett, Giovani Ribisi, Keanu Reeves, Greg Kinnear, Hillary Swank and the late Michael Jeter - make this unique.