Spoiler Alert: He sees dead people!

Movie: The Sixth Sense

Rank: 89

Year: 1999

Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Cast: Bruce Willis, Haley Joel Osment, Toni Collette, Olivia Williams

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If you have somehow avoided seeing or hearing spoilers aboutThe Sixth Sense, might I suggest not reading a blog entitled Spoiler Alert. You have likely encountered a miracle, in part established by a film released before meme culture, and you should take full advantage of the opportunity to live a 1990’s existence. Even if only for one hour and forty-seven minutes. Trust me, going in blind to this movie would be worth it.

If, however, you are among the vast majority of civilization who have seen M. Night Shyamalan’s arguably best-known film, then you have come to the right place. Though, I must admit I am rather surprised an institution as highfalutin as the American Film Institute would choose a movie which feels so tied to pop culture. I mean, even Boy Meets Worldquoted “I see dead people.”

While it had been a while before my 11:00 p.m. viewing tonight, I first saw this movie at a likely inappropriately young age. Given its 1999 theatrical release, I believe I was around six or seven years old when I watched it on VHS. It’s hard to remember the twists and turns at such a young age, so now I live without any memory of the initial excitement or shock. Instead, each scene in the movie reads out as a rather obvious map to the film’s shocking ending. Masterful, but obvious.

If you’re like me, then your first thought when watching the movie, other than noting its ominous music, was a question: Is that the bridesmaid from Ross and Emily’s wedding who slept with Joey on FRIENDS? I am here to save you time on IMDb. The answer is yes. Shockingly, her two-episode appearance on television’s greatest achievement is not ranked among her top four credits.

"Once upon a time there was this person named Malcolm. He worked with children. He loved it. He loved it more than anything else. And then one night, he found out that he made a mistake with one of them. He couldn't help that one. And he can't stop thinking about it, he can't forget. Ever since then, things have been different. "

- Malcolm Crowe, The Sixth Sense

The actress, Olivia Williams, plays Anna. She is married to Bruce Willis’ Malcolm, a child psychologist who was just awarded special recognition by the city of Philadelphia. They head upstairs where she finds broken glass and knocked over belongings. Emerging from the bathroom, we see Donnie Wahlberg clad only in underwear and looking a fair bit like Psych’s Mary Lightly. Apparently a disgruntled former patient, he shoots Malcolm before turning the gun on himself.

A bit of a jump forward, he takes on a new patient in Cole Sear played by the child actor of every 1990’s movie: Haley Joel Osment. While Osment can’t say he, like Williams and Willis, appeared in FRIENDS, his sister Emily did.

Cole has anxiety among other issues, such as scratch marks and bruises all over his body. His classmates call him a freak and he had an incident at school over violent drawings. His mother is fully aware something is awry and struggles to connect with him over the inconsistencies and secrets. While cleaning one day, she does notice, however, that there are orbs of light which seem to appear in multiple photos throughout his childhood.

At home, Malcolm and his wife are far from the lovey-dovey couple before the shooting. She eats alone when he’s late for dinner, she falls asleep on the couch watching their wedding video, she has a new prescription for anti-depressants and she’s getting awfully close to a male employee.

Malcolm meets up with Cole at the hospital one evening, after bullies at a birthday party locked Cole in an attic and he has some sort of physical attack. His mother, Lynn, opens the door after his screams only to find him passed out. At this moment, we can see neither of them really "belongs" as her green velvet shirt is at odds with the conservative suits of the other mothers. Rushing him to the hospital, they find no physical cause of the outburst, but do take note of the scratches and require her to speak with a social worker. While this is happening, Cole opens up to Malcolm about the cause of his distress. The resulting revelation is the oft-quoted: “I see dead people.”

He encounters these dead people all the time, noting how they don’t realize they are dead seeing only that with which they want. After this revelation, we start to see Cole’s world as he does: walking down the hall past three people hanging, gunshot victims walking through his house and disgruntled housewives altering the air conditioning.

"I see dead people."

- Cole Sear, The Sixth Sense

While Malcolm doesn’t believe him at first, he listens to old tapes of his shooter’s appointments and decides it might be possible after hearing another voice. He thinks it would be worth engaging with these people. So when a vomiting, dead girl playing by Mischa Barton shows up in his red tent, Cole decides to see if she is trying to say something.

red tent (noun): Red blankets clipped with clothing pins, draped over chairs and shelves. Adorned with a “Do Not Enter” sign and filled with religious figurines. A place to retreat when haunted.

Malcolm takes Cole to the funeral of Mischa Barton’s character. She gives Cole a box containing a VHS which he gives to her grieving dad. When he first pops in the tape, no one else is watching. Soon, as her mom interrupts her playing for lunch, a full viewing audience realizes she has been poisoning her and appears to have set her sights on her younger daughter. I came across an article which referred to this movie as an example of Munchausen syndrome by proxy, the same condition which infamously led Gypsy Rose Blanchard to coordinate with a boyfriend to have her mother killed. Also, this murderous mama wore red to the funeral as if were a member of the Blossom family in Riverdale.

A renewed sense of hope in handling his issue, Cole makes strides, even getting the lead in the school play much to the chagrin of his child-actor bully. Discussing how they are unlikely to see each other again, Cole suggests Malcolm talk to Anna while she sleeps. A note which seems interesting after Cole walked into his mom’s bedroom while she was having nightmares.

On the way home from the play, Cole tells Lynn he’s ready to be honest: he sees ghosts including the dead woman in the crash causing their traffic. When she initially struggles to find the proper response, he shares a message from her dead mother which seemingly wins her over.

"And the tiny hairs on your arm, you know when they stand up? That's them. When they get mad... it gets cold."

- Cole Sear, The Sixth Sense

During Malcolm’s nighttime talk, Anna asks why he left her. We see her cold breath, often associated with these afterlife visitors. In that moment, it all hits Malcolm: ghosts don’t know they are dead and only see what they want, no one other than Cole interacted with him and he bled out after being shot. He touches the back of his shirt to find it dripping with blood. He tells her she was never second best and tomorrow will be different. He’s ready to leave.

While this movie was a surprising inclusion on the list, I do see its significance in the film industry. In a vein similar to Alfred Hitchcock, it sets up a sense of horror through suspense and surprising revelations. While I am not as well-versed in Hitchcock as others, those movies on the list await, I have watched a couple and viewed the themed-episode of Psych more times than I can count. These comparisons seem rather intentional as Shyamalan too makes cameos; in this film as the doctor confronting Lynn about his suspicion of child abuse. Certain scenes, like the spiraling staircase at the birthday party, even appear to be an overt homage.

However, with the exclusion of Hitchcock, I can’t think of another director famous, and at times infamous, for their twists and turns. Especially not with a modern film catalog. While this convention eventually gets a bit out of hand for Shyamalan, The Sixth Senseproves to be a pure narrative structure using common conventions of the thriller genre and rooting it in the lives of relatable people. The open cabinets, the handprints, the voices and the mysterious injuries were all adding up to mental illness, only to be revealed as the byproduct of seeing ghosts. Once that is revealed, it seems the movie is just setting up the resolution: how to fix their familial relationships and create a plan to deal with these spirits. Instead revealing Malcolm has been one of those dead individuals the whole time. The insularity of the story, with four principal characters and few additional ones to build out the incidents, keeps it narrow in focus and easier to follow.

For your edification: my sixth sense is guessing when celebrities are pregnant before they publicly announce. Thank you for asking.

P.S. The phrase, "Yo no quiero morir," heard on the tape from the shooter's sessions means "I don't want to die." It an also be heard at the end of the credits.