The Sixth Sense (I've Finally Seen It)

SPOILERS AHEAD FOR THE POP CULTURE OBLIVIOUS

Bruce Willis was dead the whole time.

YEAH, THAT ONE

You know this already, whether you’ve seen M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense before or not. One cannot take a stroll down Film Discussion Lane without having this revealed to them. Even a certain song by The Lonely Island reveals this, and it describes their… enthusiastic response to this revelation. I had not seen The Sixth Sense before, and going in I knew what was coming. And oh, what I wouldn’t do to go back and experience this film during its initial release, without the knowledge of the eventual SHOCKING TWIST ENDING. (I have made a vow to type this phrase in all caps whenever I use it.)

The fact that the ending was spoiled for me did not change the fact that I wholly enjoyed this tale of a boy that sees ghosts and the psychologist who tries to help him. The ending still packed an emotional punch that I did not expect, and that is because the screen is inhabited by actual characters who think and feel and all that stuff that Michael Bay doesn’t give a crap about. In fact, even M. Night Shyamalan would forget this after a while, relying on style over substance, and relentless adherence to a formula that involves a SHOCKING TWIST ENDING. The weird thing about this film is that it earns it.

We open on Dr. Malcolm Crowe and his wife celebrating Crowe’s latest achievement in child psychology. A former patient of his, played by the less famous Wahlberg brother, has broken in to his house. After shooting Malcolm in the stomach he turns the gun on himself. We fade away to black, and then return the next fall to find Crowe at the doorstep of his latest patient, Cole Sear, played by Haley Joel Osment. Cole is exhibiting the same types of behavior as the homicidal patient Crowe faced, and he sees Cole as a chance to make things right. After a while Cole reveals the reason for his strange behavior. This is another point where you could probably sing along:



This is strange, certainly. However, I feel the film could have gone a different route:



From this point on, we see the dead people along with Cole, and the sights are effectively chilling. This is a very powerful performance from Osment, who is given perhaps one of the toughest roles a child has ever had to play. Most child characters are reduced to “stand there and look cute” parts, as well as the occasional “stand there while the dinosaur comes at you and you scream but Sam Neill will save the day” parts. Here Osment projects all kinds of emotions, and he transmits the requisite child-in-a-thriller creepiness in a way I have not seen one do on film before. Osment is a legitimate actor, and once his life is straightened out I hope his acting career gets back on track. The last major motion picture he starred in was 2003’s Secondhand Lions, which I like to call Puberty: The Movie.

While treating Cole, Crowe is having trouble communicating with his wife. Is it, I don’t know, because HE’S DEAD?! That was the main problem with the movie for me, in fact. I was watching it knowing the whole time that Crowe was dead and his wife was simply in mourning, and sometimes I had trouble seeing how anybody could think differently. I would love to see this movie not knowing anything about it, and see how these scenes between dead Crowe and alive Crowe’s wife played out. It seemed obvious to me that he was dead, but then again, I knew it was coming. This is no fault of the film, but instead it is my own.

The one scene between Crowe and his wife that absolutely works either way is the ending, which is played with the perfect balance between shock and sentiment. When Willis talks while his wife is asleep I was incredibly moved by what was going on. I was also impressed by the film’s refusal to absolutely tie things up in a pretty little bow. The final scene between Cole and his mother does not leave us with warmth, but a something a little darker. We do not know how this kid ends up living with this ability, nor how his mother handles her son’s strangeness.

However, when this film was released we fed M. Night Shyamalan exactly what he wanted to hear. Slowly his work devolved into self-congratulating hooey. The next two films by Shyamalan were praised, with another Bruce Willis vehicle Unbreakable (I haven’t seen it) and then Signs. While I loved most of Signs, this is also where his work began to devolve. The ending is poorly handled by Shyamalan, and the style in which Signs is made is incredibly awkward. That form of direction and cinematography compliments the movie perfectly for most of the film, but towards the end it falls with a thud. Shyamalan would repeat this style from this point on, with the following universally reviled films: The Village , Lady in the Water and The Happening. Lady in the Water is an ego trip of fantastic proportions, and The Happening is, well, watch this:



There you have it. The next Shyamalan film comes this summer in the form of The Last Airbender. I think a film like this might be a good outlet for him to stay away from his normal tendencies, but I’d like to see him return to a smaller film like The Sixth Sense, which is without a doubt the most influential thriller in recent memory. It even influenced Martin Freaking Scorsese when he released Shutter Island earlier this year. No, I cannot go a post without mentioning his name. Either way, The Sixth Sense is an example of everything Shyamalan does well. It’s up to him to remember it.

Rating: (out of 4)