Classic Movie Review: 'The Sixth Sense'

The Sixth Sense (1999)

Directed by M. Night Shyamalan

Written by M. Night Shyamalan

Starring Bruce Willis, Haley Joel Osment, Toni Collette

Released August 6th, 1999

Published August 7th, 2024

Will the real M. Night Shyamalan please stand up? Truly, I cannot tell who M. Night Shyamalan really is. On one hand, he’s a brilliant auteur who masterfully manipulated audiences in The Sixth Sense. On the other hand, he’s also the director of several of the weirdest and worst movies that I have ever seen, Lady in the Water, The Happening, The Last Airbender, After Earth, and Glass. He’s also the wildly ambitious mind behind Knock at the Cabin and Old, two movies I don’t love but are, at the very least, wildly experimental in concept.

Just when I think I understand that Shyamalan is a studio guy, a director who needs to be reigned in by a heavy handed producer and distributor, he goes off and makes Split, a bizarre but effective comic book villain origin story that I found to be utterly brilliant. That film was his first truly great movie since he left Disney subsidiary Buena Vista Pictures which had provided that heavy hand of the studio on Shyamalan’s three previous great films, The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and my personal favorite, Signs.

Shyamalan parted ways with Disney/Buena Vista because the studio refused to make Lady in the Water with him. The studio could clearly see what Shyamalan could not, Lady in the Water was an obvious debacle. Shyamalan plunged headlong into the abyss of Lady in the Water and that led to a run of bad movies that are as bad as his previous three picture run had been brilliant. I’m glossing over The Village, it’s only mediocre and doesn’t fit the narrative, which is fitting of the motif of Shyamalan’s career.

Lady in the Water, The Happening, and The Last Airbender left me gobsmacked. How could a director who made genuine masterpieces have plunged to such astonishing depths. These three movies were incredibly bad. These are debacles that people still cringe at today. The Happening is a punchline that rivals Plan 9 from Outer Space and The Room in terms of movies that are beloved for being so very bad. It seems impossible to me that the same director also made The Sixth Sense.

The cleanest narrative is that Shyamalan left behind the guiding hand of Disney/Buena Vista and without them, he crumbled. But then, after loaning himself to Will Smith to make After Earth, a different kind of bad movie, Shyamalan made a terrific little horror movie called The Visit. He had seemingly bounced back. That was followed by one the best movies of his career, in my opinion, Split. It was as if the old M. Night Shyamalan magic had suddenly returned. It didn’t last.

Shyamalan followed Split with the disastrous Glass and ruined every bit of goodwill that Split created with me. Since then, things have been weird. Old was a wild swing in the dark that appeared profound if only by accident. Knock at the Cabin had bold ideas but was inconsistent and unable to stick the landing when trying to capitalize on those bold ideas. And Shyamalan’s latest movie, Trap, is an unmitigated disaster that once again has me wondering who the real M. Night Shyamalan is.

Trap is a mess of bad acting, unmotivated camera set ups, and close ups so embarrassingly composed that the actors can barely act for having the camera going up their noses. The editing is haphazard, possibly because the movie had to cut around one of the stars who was so wildly miscast that they may have been unable to perform the role they were cast in. It’s the kind of movie you might expect from an amateur taking their first swing at directing a movie. It’s genuinely shocking to think that this is the same man who made The Sixth Sense.

The Sixth Sense, released on August 6th, 1999, was an immediate sensation. Shyamalan combines a supernatural premise with down to Earth Hitchcockian approaches to film style and pacing to create a legit classic. The Sixth Sense was made by an auteur with a strong vision and stylistic cohesion that is absent from Shyamalan’s later work. The film still carries some of Shyamalan’s quirks, like his tendency for clunky exposition and awkward attempts at humor. That said, Bruce Willis appears to understand Shyamalan’s approach to dialogue and performance better than any actor ever has.

In The Sixth Sense, Bruce Willis plays Dr. Malcolm Crowe, a prominent and well-respected Child Psychiatrist. On the night that he’s been honored for his work by the City of Philadelphia, his house is invaded by a former patient named Vincent (Donnie Wahlberg, in an unexpectedly brilliant cameo). Vincent shoots Malcolm before taking his own life. The film then leaps forward more than 6 months. Malcolm, having survived the shooting, is back to work trying to help a new child patient named Cole Sear.

Cole appears to have the same kind of issues that Vincent had exhibited. Malcolm comes to see helping Cole as a way of making up for failing to help Victor. Cole is odd and distant but over a series of encounters, Malcolm begins to win Cole over. Eventually, in a scene that has been mimicked and referenced but never matched, Cole reveals to Malcolm that he can see dead people. Indeed, he sees dead people all the time, walking around as if they don’t know that they are dead.

Malcolm, like any other rational professional would, assumes that this is part of Cole’s vast mental disorder, one that may lead him to a lifetime spent in mental hospitals. However, after revisiting Vincent’s case via recordings made at the time, Malcolm starts to believe that Cole is telling the truth. With Malcolm’s help, Cole begins investigating these ghosts, offering to help them. In the film’s boldest departure, Cole helps a young, recently deceased, teenager reveal to her father that her mother had been poisoning her for months before her death.

The scene plays out without either Cole or Malcolm on screen for several minutes. And yet, it remains a riveting scene. Other than the twist ending, this is the kind of bold choice that sets Shyamalan apart from other filmmakers. He trusts his storytelling instincts to such a degree that he’s willing to take the movie away from his stars and rest the whole thing on characters who’ve only just been introduced to the story. They also are not characters who will be sticking around. It takes guts to do this and I admire the audacity of Shyamalan. It’s a great scene.

And then comes the big twist. It’s been 25 years, but, if you don’t know, go watch The Sixth Sense and come back. You can only see The Sixth Sense one time as it was intended to be seen, with the shocking twist fully intact. You can never get back the feeling of being fooled on such a grand scale. The Sixth Sense is a brilliant, smart, emotional, and stunning movie, so go see it first and then come back here for the spoilery discussion.

On the night Malcolm was shot by Vincent, he died. He’s been dead throughout the whole movie and those who had not had the ending spoiled, they had no idea. There are plenty of hints, but I am willing to bet that even people who claimed that they guessed the ending were shocked by the twist at the time. Shyamalan plays a very skillful trick in The Sixth Sense, visually integrating Malcolm into scenes with characters other than Cole in ways that would seem as if the other characters were interacting with him.

One standout moment is a very simple two-shot from Cole’s perspective. Cole enters his home to find Malcolm sitting directly across from Cole’s mother, Lynn, played by Toni Collette. It’s a split second visual, Cole walks in, Lynn is looking down at the floor, and the two are silent, seemingly in discomfort. Lynn never looks at or refers to Malcolm being there but the visual is more than enough to make it appear that the two were in mid-conversation just as Cole arrived. It’s rather basic in execution and film language but it is absolutely pivotal from a storytelling perspective. This moment is the reason most audiences were fooled by The Sixth Sense.

The other reason most people were so wonderfully fooled by The Sixth Sense is the career best performance by Bruce Willis. While actors like Mark Wahlberg, Josh Hartnett, and Adrien Brody have fallen victim to Shyamalan’s direction, left looking like amateurs after trying to interpret Shyamalan’s quirky approach to dialogue and character development, Willis appears to own Shyamalan’s characters. Perhaps Willis used his star power to punch up the dialogue or maybe he’s so naturally charismatic that he can overcome Shyamalan, Willis is incredible under Shyamalan’s direction.

Willis plays Malcolm deeply understated and yet with a sly charm. He’s sad and haunted but helping Cole genuinely means something to him and brings out a warmth, humor and compassion that he seemed to have lost after getting shot. It’s an exceptional performance wherein you forget that you are watching one of the most well known and beloved movie stars in the world at the time. Willis has never been better than he is in The Sixth Sense. More people will remember Willis for Diehard than any other movie but if you need proof that Willis was more than just a movie star, The Sixth Sense is the proof of his talent.

The Sixth Sense is lightning in a bottle. Shyamalan has chased this kind of achievement since and has never recaptured the same magic. Signs is my favorite Shyamalan movie but that’s based as much on how and when I saw Signs as much as the quality of Signs. The Sixth Sense is Shyamalan’s one true masterpiece. It’s a moment in time, the right film by the right filmmaker, with the right cast. If Shyamalan had only made this one well known, big budget blockbuster, he would have gone down in history as an indisputable genius.

But he didn’t end his career with The Sixth Sense, he started it, and his career has been a baffling mystery ever since. How did the same man who crafted The Sixth Sense to near perfection go on to have one of the most puzzling careers in film history? No other filmmaker has a career like Shyamalan. When Martin Scorsese misses he makes The Irishman, a film that is bloated and indulgent but is still crafted by a master of the form. When Shyamalan misses, he makes The Happening or Trap, defiantly awful movies that appear to be made by an amateur filmmaker and not the auteur who so elegantly crafted The Sixth Sense.

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