We are familiar with the four pillars of a typical review. We discuss plot—the events in order, the “what” of the thing. We break down character—the “who,” the motivations, and the arcs. We take apart the craft—the “how,” the writing, the visuals, the game systems. And we give judgment—the “so what,” the star rating, or final verdict. This is the sturdy, dependable grammar of review. It’s practical. It’s predictable. But it is, in and of itself, insufficient.
It misses the soul.
Reviewing has a fifth sense, a more slippery and deeper faculty. It’s the power of judgment not only over the material aspects of a piece of work, but over its textural existence. It’s about converting the intangible—the mood that attaches to you hours afterward, the emotional truth of a color scheme, the unspoken gravity of a well-placed pause, the affective quality of a world. This is the sense of feeling beyond function. It’s what separates a technical appraisal from a piece of criticism that itself becomes art.
This isn’t about being “objective” vs. “subjective.” That’s an exhausted, untrue dichotomy. All criticism is, to some extent, subjective. This is about deepening your subjective reaction, sharpening it into a tool that can explain why a work of art doesn’t merely work or not work, but how it breathes and lives and, in the end, how it makes us feel.
The Poverty of the “What” and the “How”
Let us be clear: plot and function do count. In a game, a launch bug is a fair complaint. In a film, an enormous plot hole can destroy believability. In a novel, awkward prose can stop a reader cold in their tracks. These are the building blocks. If they are broken, the whole edifice is at risk.
But a foundation isn’t a house. You can have a perfectly built house with impeccable plumbing and wiring that feels completely sterile and unlived-in. And you can have a wonky, crooked cottage that feels like a sanctuary the moment you walk in. What it comes down to is the feeling, the emotional impression of the space.
They are very good at diagnosing the pipes. They inform us whether the pipes are leaky (the plot is sound) and whether the lights come on (the mechanics are intact). But they are not very good at telling us about the quality of the light in the room during a sunset or the specific creak of a floorboard that makes the residence feel like home. They are not very good at capturing the numinous aspect—the ineffable, often spiritual, something—that turns a product into an experience.
This fifth sense is one of creating a critical vocabulary for that creak in the floorboard.
The Lexicon of the Fifth Sense: Moving Beyond “It Made Me Feel”
But how do we speak the unspeakable? We begin by broadening our lexicon beyond “It was cool” or “It made me sad.” We steal from other fields—psychology, philosophy, architecture, and sensory studies—to create a new critical vocabulary.
1. Texture & Haptic Sensibility:
This is the most literal path to accessing the fifth sense. Textural reality is the near-physical sensation of a work. It’s not how graphically accurate a game (a working element) is, but how it feels as a world.
In Games: Take Dark Souls. A fifth-sense review wouldn’t merely describe its difficulty curve (function). It would describe the textural heft of its world: the grime-covered armor that’s heavy to even gaze at, the muffled, echoing footsteps in an empty cathedral, and the feel of dampness and rot in Blighttown. It’s a world you don’t merely observe; you sense it on your skin. It possesses a haptic sensibility—it engages your sense of touch through visual and aural hints. In contrast, a game such as Gris employs watercolor textures, gentle animations, and a sweeping score to establish an ur-textural reality of sorrow that is hazy, fuzzy, and lovely, rather than stiff and harsh.
In Film: Consider the grainy, texture-rich quality of 1970s neo-noir movies such as Chinatown. The texture itself narrates a tale of moral decay and a sun-bleached, cynical world. Contrast that with the slick, hyper-real, almost liquid quality of Avatar: The Way of Water. That texture builds awe, fluidity, and otherworldly wonder. The texture is an important carrier of meaning.
In Literature: This is the realm of prose style. Is the writer’s sentence rhythm jagged and blunt (e.g., Chuck Palahniuk) or fluid and decadent (e.g., F. Scott Fitzgerald)? Is the language rough burlap or smooth silk? This texture of prose actually constructs the emotional texture of the reading experience.
2. Rhythm & Pacing (The Unseen Pulse):
Pacing is usually defined in terms of plot pace—”the second act plods.” The fifth sense hears a more profound rhythm. It’s the internal rhythm of a work, its breathing and cadence.
The Rhythm of a Scene: The Coen Brothers are the masters of rhythmic editing. The tempo in No Country for Old Men is not only slow; it’s calculated, tense, and broken up by pockets of deep silence. The rhythm itself is tense. It wears on you. A review sensitive to this would not simply state “it’s slow” but would explain how that rhythmic tension echoes the protagonist’s terrified psyche.
The Rhythm of a Game: Doom Eternal has a rhythm: it’s a breakneck, heavy-metal symphony of violence in which every motion—fire, dash, glory-kill—is a note in an unstoppable composition. The rhythm is addictive and purifying. A puzzle game like The Witness, on the other hand, has a contemplative, patient rhythm. Its quietness and lack of urgency make it a rhythm of reflection. The pacing of experience is the goal.
The Rhythm of a Book: The staccato, minimalist chapters of The Road by Cormac McCarthy create a rhythm of exhaustion and desperation, mimicking the trudging pace of the characters. A novel like Ulysses uses a constantly shifting rhythmic structure to mirror the flow of consciousness.
3. Temperature & Chromatic Emotion:
Art has a temperature. It may be clinically cold, invitingly warm, or hot with fever. This is usually, though not necessarily, associated with color.
The Cold: David Fincher’s movies (Zodiac, Gone Girl) tend to possess a chilly, greenish, almost metallic temperature. It produces a feeling of emotional distance, cynicism, and forensic examination. It’s a warmth-less world.
The Warm : Wes Anderson’s movies are notoriously warm, employing ochre, pastel pink, and deep red color schemes. But the warmth extends beyond appearances; it’s emotional. It produces a feeling of nostalgia, fantasy, and carefully staged charm even when tending to sorrowful themes.
The Hot: The desert heat of Lawrence of Arabia is a presence in its own right. You can smell the burning sun, the illusions, and the perspiration. The heat is stifling and intimidating, directly impacting the obsession and madness themes.
A fifth-sense review would recognize this chromatic emotion—the sensation produced by a color scheme—and diagnose how it goes toward creating the overall affective mood.
4. Weight & Silences (The Architecture of Absence):
What is not there is sometimes as significant as what is. The importance of a story isn’t merely in its grand dramatic points, but in the silences that invest them.
The Weight of a Choice: In Disco Elysium, the weight is not in blast action but in the mute, internal consideration of a dialogue option. The game makes you sense the gravity of each decision, the huge burden of reconstructing a broken self. A functional critique discusses the branching dialogue trees; a fifth-sense critique discusses the emotional weight of those branches.
The Weight of a Glance: Silent moments are the most compelling in the film Portrait of a Lady on Fire. The weight of a prolonged stare between the two leads is more forceful in terms of narrative and emotion than reams of dialogue. The review has to be able to remain in that silence and report on its findings.
The Weight of the Unsaid: In Hemingway’s celebrated iceberg theory, the real weight of the story is underwater, in what’s left unsaid. A reviewer has to feel that submerged bulk and explain how its existence informs all that eventually rises above the waterline.
Cultivating Your Fifth Sense: A Practical Guide
It’s not some mystical gift reserved for a select few. It’s a muscle that can be exercised.
1. Practice Deep, Uninterrupted Immersion: You can’t feel the texture of a world if you’re checking your phone every ten minutes. For the length of your exposure to the media, be present. Let it wash over you. Don’t think about your review yet. Just feel.
2. Interrogate Your Physical and Emotional Response: Once you’re done, ask yourself hard-nosed questions:
Did my position change while watching/playing/reading? Did I lean forward? Grip my fists? Relax entirely?
Where did I experience it in my body? A knot in my abdomen? A lightness in my chest? A tightness in my shoulders?
What is the one image, sound, or sensation that stays with me hours or days later?
Did the world seem heavy and oppressive or expansive and freeing?
Did the experience leave me energized, drained, thoughtful, or nervous?
3. Keep a “Sensory Journal”: Don’t simply record plot points. Record feelings, textures, and sensations. “The fighting felt chunky and satisfying.” “The music had a lonely, echoing sound to it that made the city seem deserted.” “The writing was so rich I felt I could smell the rain on the pavement.” This exercise develops your vocabulary for the elusive.
4. Cross-Pollinate Your Media Diet: Listen to what music critics say about the “soundscape” of an album. Read how art critics write about the “emotional impact” of a painting’s brushwork. Watch how a food critic writes about the “mouthfeel” of a dish. They’re all fifth-sense experts in their fields. Plunder their vocabulary.
5. Embrace Ambiguity and Paradox: The fifth sense frequently operates in contraries. A game can be frustrating and engaging (Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy). A movie can be lovely and terrifying (Pan’s Labyrinth). A novel can be sad and inspiring (The Book Thief). Don’t attempt to settle these contradictions. Be with them. They are frequently the source of a work’s greatest strength.
The Ethical Imperative: Why This Matters Now More Than Ever
With an age of content created by algorithms and committee-made blockbusters specifically designed to appeal to every demographic beat, the fifth sense is a gesture of critical resistance.
Consumer reviews that merely tick boxes down on a list of features (“Good fight, 8/10”) are fulfilling for the market. They inform us whether something is a good buy. But criticism that addresses the affective climate is fulfilling for the art and for the audience. It legitimates and gives voice to the profound, personal, and inarticulate responses we have to the art. It informs us why that art is important on a human level.
It leaves an impression of feeling. It is, “This is what it was like to be a human being experiencing this artwork at this moment in time.” It defends pieces that may be functionally imperfect but are emotionally or texturally great. It can describe why a game with “janky” gameplay, such as Deadly Premonition, is a cult classic because of its completely one-of-a-kind and engrossing atmosphere. It can justify the sluggish, unhurried rhythm of a movie because this rhythm is integral to its contemplative atmosphere.
Finally, cultivating this fifth sense makes you not only a better critic but a more fully realized human being. It heightens your awareness of the world. You begin to see the beat of your own city, the quality of light in your own kitchen in the morning, and the emotional tone of a conversation. You are more alive to the infinite, nuanced craft of being.
Conclusion: The Critic as a Feeling Instrument
The purpose of reviewing is not to render a final, objective verdict. It is to begin a dialogue. To be a guide. The reviewer is not a chilly, unemotional judge but an affective instrument—a seismograph attuned to the quivers of meaning and feeling within a work.
By tapping the fifth sense, we go beyond the dearth of “This is what happens” and into the abundance of “This is what it feels like to be there.” We learn to judge the soul of a thing. We write reviews that don’t merely inform people whether to buy something, but that celebrate their deepest, most intimate reactions to art. We compose reviews that, in their own turn, become a testament to the lovely, messy, and completely human exercise of feeling.
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