#60: THE SIXTH SENSE (1999)

 TW: Suicide

THRILL SCALE 1-10

10

HAVE I SEEN IT BEFORE?

Yes, several times, the first time shortly after it was released on home video in March of 2000

BEST SEQUENCE

For scares it's probably the first appearance of Kyra (Mischa Barton), the little girl ghost, in Cole's (Haley Joel Osment's) tent; the ghost woman in the kitchen is also terrifying, including when she walks by the open bathroom door. And while it's not really scary, that final scene still packs a punch

BEST LINE

"I see dead people" - obviously

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE

86%

ROTTEN TOMATOES CRITICS CONSENSUS

"M Night Shayamalan's The Sixth Sense is a twisty ghost story with all the style of a classical Hollywood picture, but all the chills of a modern horror flick."

IMDB SYNOPSIS

"Malcolm Crowe, a child psychologist, starts treating a young boy, Cole, who encounters dead people and convinces him to help them. In turn, Cole helps Malcolm reconcile with his estranged wife."

DIRECTOR

M. Night Shyamalan

MAIN CAST

Bruce Willis, Haley Joel Osment, Toni Collette, Mischa Barton, Olivia Williams, Donnie Wahlberg

THOUGHTS

• This was the first real horror movie I ever saw, and it scared the ever-loving piss out of me. I slept with the lights on for a few nights after seeing it. I would lie on my side in bed, afraid to turn over to the other side just in case there was a little girl just standing there, looking at me and vomiting. And by the way, I was born in 1986, so you do the math and decide how embarrassed I should be by all of the above
• All these years later, and even after having seen it several more times, The Sixth Sense is still a pretty terrifying movie. What really gets me is the suddenness and the unpredictability of when Cole is going to run into ghosts, even if it may be a bit of a horror movie cheat. When Cole can be walking down his own hallway, in the middle of the day, only to see a ghost appear, that's when we know that he's never truly safe
• I forgot how patient this movie is with getting to the supernatural, really scary stuff. We don't hear "I see dead people" until 50 minutes into the movie, and before that point we don't see any dead people either (with one obvious exception). There's some creepy stuff in the first half of the movie, like all the kitchen cupboards suddenly opening (reminiscent of a similar scene in Poltergeist), but the first truly scary scene is when Cole gets shoved into a closet with a ghost, whose voice we hear but who we do not see, which is some nice restraint from Shyamalan that makes the scene all the more terrifying
• After this point it's all ghosts all the time with barely any time to catch one's breath. I also feel like this is a good time to mention, I hope it should be pretty obvious at this point that I wouldn't consider myself squeamish when it comes to movies - a movie can do whatever it needs to in order to scare or shock me. However, it is also worth commending The Sixth Sense for still being one of the scariest movies I've ever seen, and with only a PG-13 rating
• Bruce Willis and Haley Joel Osment are both excellent in this, if for no other reason than the fact that they can take Shyamalan's dialogue, which can be pretty clunky and expository at times, and make it sound natural. Toni Collette is also excellent as Cole's mother (and Collette and Osment were both nominated for Best Supporting Oscars). And, even Donnie Wahlberg is pretty memorable in the small but important role as Malcolm's former student
• And so, let's talk about the man behind it all, M. Night Shyamalan himself. The Sixth Sense was an absolute sensation, and while it wasn't actually his first movie it still set a precedent for everything that would follow, usually detrimentally so. We'll be talking about some more Shyamalan movies after this one, so I won't get too deep into comparisons, but I will say that The Sixth Sense is my favourite movie of his by a long shot. At this point I'm not totally sure what second place would even be, but whatever it is it's not a close race. And, largely, this boils down to the way the twist hits in The Sixth Sense. Firstly, since this was the movie that put Shyamalan on the map and made his name synonymous with a twist ending, as the first "Shyamalan-esque" movie it had that added element of surprise. But, even more importantly, the twist ending in The Sixth Sense does not diminish any part of the movie that comes before it. It doesn't make anything less scary and it's not overly distracting - at no point is Bruce Willis's Malcolm the source of any of the movie's frightening scenes, so considering the twist ending is entirely related to Malcolm, it doesn't have any impact on how terrifying all the scary stuff is
• And finally, all cards on the table, and spoiler warning (although if ever there was a review that didn't need a spoiler warning, it's this one). Does the twist work? I say yes. In ways this is somewhat of a puzzle movie, something to watch and try to catch the director slipping. And there are definitely nits that could be picked, but at least as far as Malcolm's story goes, I basically have no complaints, largely due to Cole's statement that the ghosts don't know that they're dead and they only see what they want to see - as far as Malcolm goes, a lot can be brushed under the rug with that explanation. However....this does open up some inconsistencies in other parts of the movie. For example, when Cole sees people hanging in his school - how does that fit into the movie's ghost logic? Or, even more so, immediately after "I see dead people" when Cole sees the woman in the kitchen, she shows him her slit wrists. Surely this ghost must know she's dead, no? The same goes for Mischa Barton's Kyra, for that matter, whose unfinished business entirely revolves around the fact that she was poisoned. But, like I said, these are nitpicks and, for me, at least, they don't make the movie any less effective

Up next: As mentioned above, The Sixth Sense was certainly Shyamalan's breakthrough movie, but it was also just the beginning of a decades-long career. So, we'll be spending some more time with Shyamalan, movies selected based on a reader poll. Up next, with a decisive number of votes from the readers, Signs from 2002