The Sixth Sense

For the ability sometimes referred to as "sixth sense", see Extra-sensory perception. For other uses, see Sixth sense.

The Sixth Sense
File:The sixth sense.jpg U.S. film poster
Directed by	M. Night Shyamalan
Written by	M. Night Shyamalan
Produced by	Sam Mercer Frank Marshall
Starring	Bruce Willis Haley Joel Osment Toni Collette Olivia Williams
Distributed by	Buena Vista Pictures
Release dates	August 6, 1999
Running time	107 min.
Language	English
Budget	$65,000,000

The Sixth Sense is a 1999 Academy Award-nominated psychological thriller film written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan that tells the story of Cole, a troubled, isolated boy (played by Haley Joel Osment) who claims to be able to see and talk to the dead, and an equally troubled child psychologist (played by Bruce Willis) who tries to help him. The film, like much of Shyamalan's work, is known for its twist ending.

Plot synopsis

As the film opens, Dr. Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis) a prominent child psychologist, returns home one night with his wife from an event in which he was honored for his efforts with children. The two discover they are not alone - a disturbed, nearly naked man named Vincent Grey (Donnie Wahlberg) appears in the doorway of their bathroom with a gun. He says, "I don't want to be afraid anymore." Vincent is upset that Crowe has not helped him, and Crowe realizes that Vincent is a former patient he treated as a child for his hallucinations. He condemns Malcolm for his inability to help him and shoots him in the stomach, and seconds later turns the gun on himself. The scene fades away with Malcolm's wife by his side, aiding him.

Months later, next fall, Malcolm returns to work with another frightened boy, 9-year old Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment), with a condition similar to Vincent's. Malcolm becomes dedicated to this patient, though he is haunted by doubts over his ability to help him, after his failure with Vincent. Meanwhile, he begins to neglect his wife, with whom his relationship is falling apart. Malcolm earns Cole's trust and Cole ultimately confides in him that he is clairvoyant and can "see dead people." Though Malcolm is naturally skeptical at first, he eventually comes to believe that Cole is telling the truth, and that Vincent may have had the same ability as Cole. He suggests to Cole that he try to find a purpose for his gift by communicating with the ghosts, perhaps to aid them in their unfinished business on Earth. Cole is at first skeptical about this advice, as the ghosts terrify him, but soon decides to try it.

File:Movie i see dead people.jpg

"I see dead people."

Cole communicates with the ghost of one girl who appears in his bedroom and appears to be sick. He finds out where the girl, Kyra Collins (Mischa Barton), lived and goes to her house, where a funeral reception is being held for her. Kyra's ghost gives Cole a videotape (inside a box), which Cole gives to Kyra's father. The tape reveals that when Kyra was bedridden with illness, her mother was poisoning her food, which led to Kyra's death (this behavior has been suggested as Munchausen syndrome by proxy or factitious disorder). Empowered now by his ability to use his gift to positive effect, Cole confesses his ability to his mother, Lynn (Toni Collette). Although his mother is troubled by his story, Cole tells Lynn that her mother (Cole's grandmother) went to see her perform in a dance recital one night when she was a child, though Lynn was not aware of this because her mother stayed in the back of the audience where she could not be seen; he also tells her the answer to a question she asked when alone at her mother's grave. Lynn accepts this as the truth, and her relationship with Cole is strengthened.

His faith in himself now restored as a result of his success with Cole, Malcolm returns to his home, where he finds his wife sleeping on the couch, watching their old wedding video. As she sleeps, Anna's hand releases Malcolm's wedding ring, revealing the twist ending of the film — that Malcolm himself is unwittingly one of Cole's ghosts, having been killed by his ex-patient in the opening scene. Due to Cole's efforts, Malcolm's unfinished business, of rectifying his failure to understand Vincent, is completed. Recalling Cole's advice about talking to his wife while she's asleep, so that she'll have to listen, Malcolm releases her to move on with her life and frees himself to leave behind the world of the living.

Twist ending

All of the clothes Malcolm wears during the movie are items he wore or touched the evening he died, including his overcoat, his blue sweater and the different layers of his suit.

Bruce Willis, who is left-handed, learned to write with his right hand for the film to hide from the audience that Crowe was no longer wearing his wedding ring. Though the filmmakers were careful about such clues of Malcolm's state, the camera zooms slowly towards Crowe's face when Cole says he sees dead people. In a DVD special feature, the filmmakers mention that they initially feared this shot would be a dead giveaway, but they decided to leave it in. The color red is intentionally absent from most of the film, but is used prominently (and only) in a few isolated shots scattered throughout the movie, in situations where the dead are present: such as the color of the balloon and Cole's sweater at the birthday party, the tent in which he first encounters Kyra, the numbers on Crowe's tape player, the doorknob to the locked closet and the grieving mother's dress. Shyamalan's film The Village similarly portrayed the color red as having connotations with evil and the supernatural — specifically, the mysterious monsters that inhabit the woods surrounding the village.

Screenplay vs. film

The original screenplay of The Sixth Sense, written by Shyamalan and publicly circulated after the film's release, is in some ways significantly different from the film. Most notably, it contains much less information than is usual for a feature-length screenplay. This was apparently because Shyamalan expected to direct the film himself, and therefore left out most of the details which a screenwriter would normally offer to a director intending to break the story into scenes and camera set-ups.

In the screenplay (as opposed to the finished movie), it is actually more difficult to guess the story's twist ending, as Shyamalan's script makes it less obvious that Doctor Crowe is dead. Just before Crowe introduces himself to Cole (in the first sequence after Crowe has been shot), the screenplay has Crowe grimacing in pain and clutching his side: appropriate behavior for a man recovering from a severe gunshot wound. However, in the film's final edit Crowe (supposedly still alive) does not exhibit any after-effects of his life-threatening injury.

Shortly after the birthday party sequence, there is a dialogue scene in the Sear home when Cole arrives to find his mother conferring with a child psychologist, along with Crowe. In the film as edited, Crowe is merely a passive spectator in this scene. In the screenplay, Crowe responds to one of the psychiatrist's comments, with Crowe's mother speaking immediately afterward: she is actually responding to the psychiatrist, but the effect makes it seem as if she is responding to Crowe (misleading the audience to believe that Crowe can be seen and heard by other people besides Cole).

The screenplay ends with home-movie footage of Crowe at his wedding reception, making a drunken speech in a parody of the verses written by Doctor Seuss. (A reference to this survives in the final film, in the opening scene before Crowe is shot.) Instead of this ending, the film ends with a far more powerful shot: the home-movie footage of Crowe kissing his bride at their wedding, this shot then dissolving into a burst of light as Crowe's soul is finally set free.

Ghosts

• Man in closet - Locked in closet and suffocated. Possibly by someone who accused him of stealing his master's horse.
• Kitchen Woman - Beaten by her ex-husband and had cut her wrists.
• Hanged People - People from a hundred years before that were sentenced to hanging when the school was a government house. They are a black man, a white woman and a boy of apparently mixed race: a comment in the screenplay makes it clear that the two adults are an interracial couple who were lynched together with their child.
• '70s era teenage boy - Shot in the back of his head. He tells Cole "Let me show you where my dad keeps his gun."
• Spanish speaking man - Cause of death unknown, his voice heard on Malcolm Crowe's tape recorder.
• Kyra Collins - Poisoned by her mother.
• Make-up lady - Died in a fire that took place at the school.
• Woman with bike helmet - Killed by a car while riding her bike in the street. Immediately after her death, she walks past the occupants of several other cars and goes directly towards Cole, thus indicating that dead people (even immediately after their deaths) can recognize Cole as somehow more accessible to them than other living people are.
• Malcom Crowe - Shot in the stomach by former patient, Vincent.

All the ghosts seem to have been either murdered, or killed in accidents, which is probably why they have some "unfinished business" on Earth.

Cast

• Bruce Willis as Malcolm Crowe
• Haley Joel Osment as Cole Sear
• Toni Collette as Lynn Sear
• Olivia Williams as Anna Crowe
• Glenn Fitzgerald as Sean
• Mischa Barton as Kyra Collins
• Donnie Wahlberg as Vincent Gray

Production

M. Night Shyamalan said that the "The Tale of the Dream Girl" episode of Nickelodeon's television series Are You Afraid of the Dark? was inspiration for the film.

According to the book DisneyWar, Disney's David Vogel read Shyamalan's speculative script and instantly loved it. Without obtaining approval from his boss, Vogel bought the rights to the script, despite the high price of US$2 million and the stipulation that Shyamalan could direct the film. Disney later stripped Vogel of the title of President of Walt Disney Pictures, and Vogel left the company. Disney, apparently in a show of little confidence in the film, sold the profits to Spyglass Entertainment, and kept only a 12.5 percent distribution fee for itself.

Reception

The film had a production budget of approximately $40 million (plus a $25 million prints and advertising budget). It grossed $26.6 million in its opening weekend and spent five weeks as the #1 movie at the U.S. box office. It earned $293,501,675 in the United States and a worldwide gross of $672,806,292, making it the #25 on the list of box-office money earned in the U.S. as of June 2007.

The film was nominated for six Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay (M. Night Shyamalan), Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Haley Joel Osment), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Toni Collette, who played Osment's mother), and Best Editing (Andrew Mondshein). The Sixth Sense is one of only four horror films that have been nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award.

This film was #71 on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments. It was recently named the 89th Best Film of all time by the American Film Institute in 2007.

In popular culture

• The line "I see dead people" became a popular catchphrase after the film's release, reaching #44 on AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies Quote List.
• It also captured the 60th place in AFI's 100 Years... 100 Thrills, honoring America's most heart pounding movies of all-time.
• Several television shows and movies make reference to the twist ending, usually with someone finding out how it ends before they finish watching it. For instance, 50 First Dates has Drew Barrymore's character repeating the same day over and over, including watching The Sixth Sense for "the first time".

See also

Mediumship

External links

• The Sixth Sense at IMDb
• The Sixth Sense at Rotten Tomatoes
• Recognition Values: Seeing The Sixth Sense Again for the First Time, essay by Laurence A. Richels, Other Voices, March 2002.
• The Sixth Sense: Film Review
• Radio Interview with Sixth Sense Producer Frank Marshall from FBi 94.5 Sydney Australia