I should say upfront that I am not a fan of M. Night Shyamalan, but I have to give credit where credit is due. The Sixth Sense is a solid movie and it still holds up after 25 years- even if someone, or the Internet, has unfortunately spoiled the ending for you.

To be honest, I was actually unfairly rooting a bit against The Sixth Sense. I rewatched it as the second half of a 1999 seeing-dead-people marathon with Stir of Echoes hoping that I could find some argument to say Echoes was somehow superior (I hadn’t seen either film since they were released in theaters and I was wondering how well they would hold up) and that Echos- which was actually filmed first- was treated unfairly as a Sixth Sense ripoff only because it got released later. I wanted to point out that most people would concede that Stir of Echoes is the scarier of the two films, so clearly it works as the better horror. Or that the The Sixth Sense’s gotcha ending has deceived people into believing it was actually a better movie than it really is..

And its not like Stir of Echoes is even that bad film. In fact, its actualy pretty good. (You can go see that one too.)  But The Sixth Sense is, for so many reasons, just a way better movie that deserves its reputation as a horror masterpiece.

Two things had actually biased me against The Sixth Sense before I rewatched it. The first is Shyamalan. I am of the opinion that his career has taken a nosedive since this film and I don’t share in the current “comeback” narrative. The second is that it is rated PG-13, something that usually doesn’t sit right with me when watching horror. I don’t like to think that the films I’m watching have watered down the horror content because of some studio executive’s desire to increase the potential audience size. (This was pretty common thing in the 90s.) But the truth is that The Sixth Sense still feels like it is a mature horror. It is a film that could have easily included more gore or added more scares- but really, to what end? 

The Sixth Sense works because of the unnerving atmosphere it creates, not the scares it produces. It really makes you empathize with its young protagonist, making you fully believe that his otherworldly abilities are actually a form of mental Hell. 

That’s not to say The Sixth Sense doesn’t have its scary moments. That scene with the pucking ghost easily rivals the jump potential of the couch ghost in Stir of Echoes. But more than Echoes, the series of ghosts we encounter in The Sixth Sense benefit from a lingering creep factor because attached to all of them is a repeating cycle of bad decisions or mental anguish. The film is not nihilistic, but the horrific hopelessness of its first two acts still feels suffocating. 

Plus a 10-year old Haley Joel Osment acts his ass off in this film. He probably should have been nominated for an Oscar. (Joking. I know. The film was also nominated for Best Picture and Shyamalan got nominations for Best Director and Best Script.) 

The story follows Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis), an acclaimed child psychologist who is shot in his home by an angry former patient named Vincent on the same day Malcolm received accolades from the Mayor of Philadelphia. After Vincent takes revenge on Malcolm, he turns the gun to his own head and commits suicide in front of a bleeding Malcolm and his mortified wife. 

Fastforward six months and we see a still rattled Malcolm returning to his job. The first patient he takes on is Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment), a child who has a similar pathology to Vincent. Cole is highly intelligent for his age, but he has had a number of disturbing, semi-psychotic encounters at school and he has frequent bouts of apparent paranoia. His peculiar behaviour has left him with no friends and his secretive attitude leaves Lynn (Toni Collete- who was also nominated for Best Supporting Actress), his poor single mother with few answers and the occasional meddling of Child Services. .

Of course, Cole has a terrible secret, but the more time Malcolm spends with Cole, the more he starts to believe Cole to be severely schizophrenic, and the less he feels he can truly help him. That is, until enough trust is developed between the two that Cole feels he can finally reveal to Malcolm his horrible secret.

And this leads to the utterance of one of the most iconic lines in the history of cinema: “I see dead people.”

Mind you, the whole seeing dead people thing really wasn’t much of a secret, even back in 1999. Cole’s condition was already spoiled by the trailers for the film, which is too bad because Shyamalan spends the film’s first act slowly building to this admittance…though I’m pretty sure we all would have figured it out anyways after Lynn gets paranormal activitied immediately after turning her back on Cole in the kitchen. Great scene.

The film’s first act focuses on how Cole’s erratic behaviour might be observed by an outsider, but the second act sets us up to see the world from Cole’s perspective. And its a pretty scary place.

But forget Collete. Forget Willis. They are great. But Osment is the one who is really tasked with selling Shyamalan’s script and he does it with his whole being. There are so many moments that his performance is outstanding, like when he runs in a panic to school or when he winces passing a graveyard on the bus. He sells his torture and this is one of the reasons why The Sixth Sense remains such a watchable experience, even if you already know about its ending. 

But there is little doubt that The Sixth Sense’s ingenious ending deserves all of the recognition it has gotten, perhaps even for reasons some people don’t even realize. The ending does not only contain an unforgettable twist; it serves a potent metacommentary on how people, like the ghosts in the film, only see what we want to see, which of course is true of all of us when we allowed the wool to be pulled over our eyes. And really, how many films out there are able to actively involve viewers in the central theme it’s exploring.  

I think The Sixth Sense’s success damaged Shyamalan’s potential as writer and director. The movies he would make after would get progressively worse because he’d place too much focus on trick endings treating them like his gimmick. But with The Sixth Sense, Shyamaian shows confidence in the story he is telling, drawing on films like Don’t Look Now or The Changeling as his influence. (Why didn’t Shyamalan keep doing this?) The ending just serves as an extra payoff to an already great experience.

The Sixth Sense will always be remembered for a brilliant twist ending that forces us to reevaluate what came before, but the film is also great to watch twenty-five years later because of Shyamaian’s thoughtful direction and the commitment of its actors. Each character is treated as a real person with real pain- even the ghosts. Especially Ossment, who delivers with one of the greatest child performances of all time. I’m sure all the people involved felt a certain magic on the set of this film.

Upon release, The Sixth Sense helped to push the supernatural thriller back into the American consciousness. It would go on to have the second biggest domestic box office total in 1999. Shymalan has said that he felt confident making the film that he was going to deliver the first sleeper hit the horror genre had seen in years. But a month before release, The Blair Witch Project came out with its innovative found footage style and earned huge box office grosses off of a next to nothing budget. Fortunately for Shyamalan, 1999 ended up still having room to make a hit out of a very different type of horror movie. 

In 1999, The Blair Witch Project seemed something new and fresh, while The Sixth Sense was a film inspired by intelligent, supernatural thrillers of the 1970s. And in this, Shyamalan would actually end up being ahead of a trend that would fuel modern horror for decades to come.