“I want to tell you my secret now.”
M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Sixth Sense” is the definitive twist ending movie.
But its stroke of genius is that it actually tells us
the twist halfway through.
“I see dead people.”
Young Cole can communicate with ghosts, and that includes
the man he’s looking right at as he says this:
our protagonist Malcolm Crowe.
We saw Malcolm killed in the opening scene,
even though we, and he, don’t grasp this until much later
“It doesn't even hurt anymore.”
Shyamalan has said that the movies with twist endings
that he always comes back to are “Planet of the Apes” and “Psycho”
--
films where, in his words,
“…what you thought you saw you did not see.”
“Are you sure you saw an old woman?”
“Yes!
In the house behind the motel!”
This is the guiding principle of “The Sixth Sense” --
we thought we were watching a story about a child psychologist
dealing with a crumbling marriage, but that’s not actually what we saw.
The idea that most of the time we aren’t seeing what’s in front of us
isn’t just the source of the film’s magic trick --
it’s also one of its central themes.
“Is something up there?
I don't see anything.”
The way that Shyamalan puts all the clues right before our eyes,
yet makes us miss their real meaning,
reinforces how primed we are to accept
the surface narrative we’re given.
So as “The Sixth Sense” turns 20 this year,
here’s our take on how the movie’s
singular surprise ending proves its central thesis --
that at the movie theater, and in our own lives,
we see what we want to see.
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“You haven't told bedtime stories before.”
“Uh, not too many, no.”
“Well, you have to add some twists and stuff.”
What’s satisfying about “The Sixth Sense’s” twist
is it’s foreshadowed with plenty of signs.
So when it’s revealed that Malcolm is dead,
this is shocking but, simultaneously,
makes perfect sense.
The challenge of pulling off a good twist
is that if an ending is impossible to anticipate,
it just feels random and pointless.
How do you plant the seeds for an earned twist,
without giving away the game?
Here are the clues that, on second viewing,
tip us off to the fact that Malcolm has been dead all along:
After Malcolm is shot in the first scene,
we never see him being saved or recovering from his wound--
the film simply picks up the next year.
After this point, the only person
we see Malcolm have a conversation with is Cole.
We see him around his wife Anna, but the film cleverly creates reasons
for them not to directly engage with each other.
When Malcolm gets home, she’s asleep or in the shower,
and when he meets her at a restaurant for their anniversary,
we gather she’s coldly ignoring him as punishment for being late.
“I'm so sorry, Anna.
I just can't seem to keep track of time.”
When Anna refuses to look at him, snaps,
“Happy anniversary.”
and leaves as fast as possible
we read this behavior as reflecting annoyance,
but really, it’s grief.
This widow finds it too painful to endure
another minute of her anniversary dinner for one,
because she misses her husband so much.
Later when we see Malcolm and Cole’s mother Lynn
waiting for Cole to get home, we assume they’ve just been talking,
but we never hear a word exchanged between them.
Lynn doesn’t know Malcolm is there.
We also get visual clues.
For example,
when Cole tells his secret to Malcolm,
“How often do you see them?”
“All the time.
They're everywhere.”
the camera focuses on Malcolm, hinting that what Cole is saying,
“They don’t know they’re dead.”
applies to the man right in front of him.
Another big thing that helps make the ending coherent
is strict adherence to the rules and logic governing the story world.
“So we had to establish rules about each scene and how
Bruce would interact with people and situations and physical things.
So for one thing, Malcolm’s clothes never change in the movie.
“He had to have on the same clothes the whole time --
but that rule was that it wasn't necessarily the clothes he
had on when he was shot, it was clothes that he had
interacted with that evening.”
Malcolm wears the same shirt and pants, and the sweatshirt
his wife hands him in the opening scene.
“It’s getting cold.”
Another rule the filmmakers stuck to
is that most of the time Malcolm doesn’t have
a physical effect on his environment.
He repeatedly fails to open the basement door.
When he goes to the restaurant to meet Anna, he doesn’t
move the chair at all when he sits down,
and when he reaches for the check she conveniently grabs it so
we aren’t tipped off to the fact that he probably can’t move it.
The exception to this rule is when he sees Anna
with another man and breaks a glass door.
The logic is that he can exert enough force here because
it’s such an emotionally intense moment.
“With enough effort, Bruce Willis'character
can impact the physical world.”
Viewers might protest that a telltale sign of
a nearby ghost is the temperature dropping.
“It’s cold in here.”
Why then does this not seem to happen around Malcolm?
Well, one of the filmmakers’ other rules is that this only
happens when a ghost is upset.
“And then we would see the cold breath
and that was only when the ghost was angry because people have asked me,
‘Well why don't we see breath when you see Bruce Willis's character?’
Well it's because he's not angry.”
In the scene where Malcolm finally connects the dots,
the film does a mini flashback sequence
to show us that we had all the information all along.
But Shyamalan is employing the principles that a magician
uses to pull off his illusion.
"I do my little magic shake, and now it's in my right hand.”
He’s carefully directing our attention away from what he’s really doing,
and relying on known psychological habits
like our instinct to explain away
what doesn’t make sense, instead of waiting to resolve
uncertainties until we have more information.
Another phenomenon the movie plays on is
that audiences are conditioned to trust in their main character.
The show Black Mirror frequently exploits this,
blindsiding viewers by having the secrets come from within us
i.e., the character we’re identifying with.
What’s brilliant about this tactic in “The Sixth Sense” is that
Malcolm is an unknowing unreliable narrator.
He feels trustworthy because he believes
the false narrative he unwittingly feeds us:
that he and Anna have grown distant,
and that’s why they lead completely separate lives.
“His wife, doesn't like the person that he's become.
They barely speak anymore, they’re like strangers.”
His explanation that Anna resents his workaholic tendencies
“I haven't paid enough attention to my family.
Bad things happen when you do that.”
fits because of what we hear in the first scene of the movie,
before his death,
“You have put everything second, including me.”
This early scene hardly frames this
as a relationship-defining problem for the couple.
On the contrary, they seem very happy and in love.
But the movie uses that little sliver of information to its advantage,
so that we easily believe Malcolm’s interpretation
of why his marriage is falling apart.
“I know that I've been a little distant.”
I know that it makes you mad.”
“My goal as a filmmaker is to make -- try to make -- cultural phenomenons.”
“The Sixth Sense” catapulted its 29 year old director to fame,
earned multiple Oscar-nominations, and became the second-highest
grossing movie of 1999 at the domestic box office.
The twist was key to this success.
"Hey, if you didn't know Bruce Willis was dead
the whole time, that's not on me."
Watching the movie today, it would be hard not to know
the twist in advance, thanks to how deeply
ingrained it is in our cultural memory.
“Oh, did you feel that ice cold wind that just passed through?”
“I see dead people.”
"I see dead people.”
“Okay.
Spoiler alert.”
“He was dead the whole time.”
“Just stop it.”
But it’s impossible to overstate how truly
shocked viewers were at the time.
The same year, found-footage horror film “The Blair Witch Project”
went viral through savvy marketing ploys that convinced some people
it was an actual documentary.
And in a similar way, “The Sixth Sense”
unlocked the power of word of mouth.
“That Sunday did more than Friday which is a really unusual thing --
it means word of mouth is starting to go (does sound effect).”
1999 was a different time, and just as Blair Witch’s
marketing campaign relied on its particular moment
when the world wide web was far less sophisticated,
“Sixth Sense’s” earth-shattering twist was a lightning-in-a-bottle
phenomenon that couldn’t be replicated.
Shyamalan never again matched the critical success of this movie,
which turned him into -- as he put it --
“the guy who makes the scary movies with a twist.”
After this, the problem that plagued Shyamalan
is that when viewers expect a twist,
it’s almost impossible to deliver one that satisfies.
Clues have to be increasingly elaborate to escape the eagle-eyed vigilance
of the viewer who’s looking for the trick.
“How dumb are you?
You're inside a simulation
of a simulation inside another giant simulation!”
But the beauty of “The Sixth Sense”
lay in its simplicity -- how the facts were
all out in the open, hidden in plain sight.
“That isn't magic."
"What are you talking about?
Of course it's magic.”
The title of “The Sixth Sense” comes from the expression
for the ability to perceive something which isn’t
perceivable via the known physical senses.
“I'm kind of psychic.
I have a fifth sense.”
“What do you mean?”
“It's like I have ESPN or something.”
In the movie, the “sixth sense” refers specifically to Cole’s
ability to see ghosts.
The movie connects this sixth sense to
a physical sensation we all recognize.
“And the tiny hairs on your arm, you know when they stand up?”
“Yes.”
“That's them.”
Far from positioning the ability to see
dead people as an out-there eccentricity,
the film highlights that all of us have the potential to sense the dead.
It’s just that most of us don’t pay attention
or bother to develop this awareness.
The phrase “sixth sense” is also used to mean
a strong intuition or gut feeling.
And apart from Cole’s specific sixth sense,
in a general way this movie underlines the power of trusting your instincts.
“If you keep your hand moving long enough,
words and thoughts start coming out
that you didn't even know you had in you.
It could be something you heard somewhere else,
or feelings you had deep inside of you.”
“A lot of the pieces in this store communicate,
and I think you should choose a piece that speaks to you.”
According to this film, intuition can be our friend,
while the rational mind can’t always be trusted --
it’s too primed to force all new information into a pre-approved,
self-serving interpretation of reality.
"Dr. Crowe, you believe my secret, right?"
"I don't know how to answer that, Cole.”
For most of the movie, Malcolm is tortured
by his inability to express to Anna how much he loves her.
“I want to be able to talk to my wife again.
The way we used to talk to each other.”
But after Cole gives him some advice,
“Wait till she's asleep.
Then she'll listen to you
and she won't even know it.”
Malcolm finally finds a way to talk to his wife.
“I miss you.”
“I miss you too.”
It’s significant that he’s only able to reach her
when her conscious mind is down.
The suggestion is that there are certain important things
that we can only perceive and absorb on that gut-feeling,
“sixth sense” level.
“My dream is a code waiting to be broken.”
“You see ghosts, Cole?”
“They want me to do things for them.”
Cole represents a childlike wisdom and openness,
which the adults we see have cut themselves off from.
“Some magic’s real.”
If Cole ever does try to explain the presence
of ghosts to grownups, they react negatively
“Sometimes people think they lose things, and they
really didn't lose them-- it just gets moved.”
“You need to leave the table.
Go!”
and find justifications not to listen.
“He's suffering from visual hallucinations, paranoia.”
The other reason Cole can see dead people
is because of how deeply he feels.
Shyamalan has said that the boy is, quote,
“The perfect person to see people who
can’t move on with their lives in the spiritual form
because he sympathizes, he empathizes so much.”
“You think I'm sad?
What makes you think that?”
“Your eyes told me.”
The ghosts remain on earth because
they have unfinished business.
“I just needed to do a couple things.”
This is the same reason ghosts hang around in countless stories.
“All ghosts have unfinished business.
That's why they don't cross over.”
What’s different in “The Sixth Sense”, though, is how the ghosts are limited
in their understanding of that business.
Cole outlines the ghosts’ three blind spots:
“They don't see each other.
They only see what they wanna see.
They don't know they're dead.”
Without these three areas of ignorance,
the ghosts would be able to complete their agendas a lot faster.
But they’re not ready to face the truth,
so achieving their business is intertwined with the ghosts’
process of realizing they’re deceased.
Even after Malcolm helps Cole solve the mystery of what the dead want,
“They just want help, even the scary ones.”
the irony is that Malcolm doesn’t know he is one
of those very ghosts in need of help.
Malcolm prides himself on his work with children,
“You have a gift that teaches children how to be strong
in situations where most adults would piss on themselves.”
and the great rupture in his life is the reappearance of Vincent,
an old client who reveals that Malcolm’s treatment didn’t work.
“[Screaming] You failed me!”
In fact, Malcolm’s misdiagnosis may have even exacerbated
Vincent’s condition.
“You told me I was having trouble coping with my parents' divorce.
You were wrong.”
Malcolm is trying to correct his mistake with Vincent through Cole,
who reminds him of his former client
and shares the same supernatural ability.
“If he can help this new boy,
it will be like… helping that other one too.”
The second thing weighing on Malcolm is his need to tell Anna
that he cares more about her than his work.
“You were never second.
Ever.”
When both missions are complete,
Malcolm is ready to move on to some other plane.
“I think I can go now.”
The movie suggests that ghosts are a huge part of
the fabric of our existence -- they’re all around us, all the time.
“I think maybe when people own things and then they pass away,
a part of themselves gets printed on those things, like…like fingerprints.”
The scenes between Malcolm and Anna visualize this.
In a sense he really is there with her when she’s speaking to him.
“Good night Malcolm.”
“Goodnight Sweetheart.”
We aren’t as severed from the dead as we think --
the dead and the living both have unresolved issues with each other.
Thus once Malcolm fulfills his purpose on earth,
it’s implied that Anna’s life will now change for the better, too.
“Everything will be different in the morning.”
The ghostly presence can also be interpreted
to symbolize that we’re constantly haunted by our pasts.
We carry with us so much that’s happened to us that we can’t let go of.
“He couldn't help that one.
And he can't stop thinking about it.”
You can read “The Sixth Sense” as a lesson in communication.
“I'm ready to communicate with you now.”
“Communicate?”
Apparently, Haley Joel Osment’s father told the child actor
to look at the script this way: as a story about communication.
It’s all the ghosts really want.
“She wanted to tell you something.”
While for the living, it’s just as hard and just as essential.
“If we can't talk to each other, we're not gonna make it.”
The true success of Malcolm and Cole’s
relationship is that it enables both of them to connect with other people.
“I think we said everything we needed to say.
Maybe
it's time to say things to someone closer to you.”
Cole finally opens up to his mom by explaining how his ability
has allowed him to speak to her mother’s ghost.
“You thought she didn't come to see you dance.
She did.”
In this moment Cole resolves his grandmother’s unfinished business --
making sure her daughter knows that she is loved.
“She said the answer is… every day.
What did you ask?”
“Do I make her proud?”
But this scene results in Cole and his mother bonding,
reinforcing that this young boy’s journey is not just about passing
on messages for others but of him learning to
communicate in a way that’s healing and beneficial.
It seems that Cole must know Malcolm is dead from the beginning.
“You're nice, but you can't help me.”
We see Malcolm through his own eyes,
as he wants to appear, not as a dead person.
But Cole sees all the other ghosts
sporting the physical consequences of their deaths.
So we can imagine Malcolm appears to him with a visible bullet wound.
Cole seems a little frightened of Malcolm at first,
“Wanna sit?”
and he never has any confusion as to whether
anyone else he meets is alive or dead.
The fact that Cole doesn’t tell Malcolm he’s dead
doesn’t really prove anything, either, as we don’t see him
tell any other ghosts that they’re dead.
Most likely he knows that ghosts don’t react well
to this information, or that they need to realize it on their own.
“The Sixth Sense” has many parallels to “The Exorcist”, which Shyamalan
has cited as one of his favorite movies.
Both tell the story of an innocent child
who experiences strange supernatural phenomena.
“What happened to my child today?
Something was happening to him, physically happening.
Something was very wrong!”
“Did you see her or not?
She's acting like she's [Bleep] out of her mind!”
The child has a single mother,
“I don't know if you noticed,
but our little family isn't doing so good.”
“Where's her father?”
“In Europe.”
and there’s a suggestion that all this horror may
stem from the psychological toll of the father abandoning the family.
“Did you ever write any upset words before your father left?”
“I don’t remember.”
“You mentioned her father and the separation…”
In “The Exorcist”, the priest becomes
substitute father figures for Reagan.
Here, the childless Malcolm steps into that role for lonely Cole.
“He said the play sucked big time.”
“This Tommy kid sounds like a real punk.
I thought the play was excellent.”
The key difference between the two movies, though,
lies in the nature of the otherworldly forces and their intentions.
In “The Exorcist,” Reagan is afflicted
by a horrible demon that needs to be destroyed.
In “The Sixth Sense,” the ghosts turn out
to be manageable and even benevolent.
So there’s an optimistic view of whatever
supernatural forces may be out there.
And the story has an uplifting message, in that this kid --
who begins as a social outcast suffering under the weight of his
special ability, is eventually empowered by his contact
with these spirits, learning to use his skill as a force for good.
“You liked it, she said.”
Throughout “The Sixth Sense,” the color red connotes
the presence of the otherworldly.
“We used the color red to indicate anything in the real world that
has been tainted by the other world.”
So we see a red balloon and red carpeting on the stairs
leading to the “dungeon” where Cole -- dressed
in a red sweater -- is abused by a ghost,
the red fort where Cole hides from ghosts,
and the red Kyra’s mother, and killer, wears at Kyra’s memorial.
At the end of the movie when Cole plays King Arthur in the school play,
he victoriously lifts Excalibur which bears a red stone --
so we understand that what was once a curse is now a gift.
Just as King Arthur was one in a million --
the only person capable of pulling the sword from the stone --
Cole is a chosen one with an important destiny.
“It’s for you.”
The ghosts’ inability to look past what they
want to see encapsulates the movie’s central theme:
our collective failure to grasp what’s really in front of us.
At the end, we get a wider shot revealing that all this time
the basement door Malcolm keeps failing to open has been barricaded.
He never noticed because he’s been tuning out anything
that could have tipped him off to the fact that he’s dead.
And the movie features other examples of our common instinct to explain away
what doesn’t fit our preconceptions,
like when Lynn is startled to find her cupboards open,
but quickly thinks of an explanation.
“Something you were looking for, baby?”
Cole’s central speech,
“They only see what they want to see.”
is really also about the living -- about us, the audience.
And the deeper message in his words
is that when we ignore what’s in front of us,
blinded by the rigid narrative in our heads, we aren’t really living.
We’re just drifting around like ghosts,
listlessly failing to impact or interact with the world around us.
Early in the movie, Cole tells Malcolm that he got in trouble for drawing
a grisly scene clearly based on one of the dead people he sees.
“I drew a man.
He got hurt in the neck by another man with a screwdriver.”
Cole has internalized that the people around him don’t want him to be honest.
“I don't draw like that anymore.”
“How do you draw now?”
“I draw... people smiling, dogs running, rainbows.”
From the time that we’re children, we’re trained to willfully ignore
difficult truths, until we find them harder and harder to see at all.
Cole’s journey to let go of his learned defenses against the truth
is also Malcolm’s journey, as he gradually lets down
the subconscious walls of denial he’s built.
And like Cole and Malcolm, we have to learn to look
what scares us in the face.
Because while seeing what we want to see
may be easier in the short-term,
only the honest picture can bring us lasting peace.
“I don't want to be scared anymore.”
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