20 years ago, The Sixth Sense premiered and quickly turned writer and director M. Night Shyamalan into a rising superstar. Nominated for six Academy Awards (including the Green Book award, Best Picture) it was the highest grossing horror movie of all time – until some dumb clown movie claimed the title a few years ago.
The goodwill generated from The Sixth Sense (and to a lesser extent, Unbreakable) is arguably one of the reasons why Shyamalan’s is still a household name that can get butts into seats. The better part of his filmography has been wildly derided and mocked, and yet there was undeniably an air of excitement about his recent outings Split and Glass.
Fans were thrilled by the prospect of the return of the ‘classic’, the ‘good’ Shyamalan, and were more than willing to ignore a decade’s worth of duds and misfires like The Lady in the Water or The Last Airbender.
The Sixth Sense has been immortalised through pop culture osmosis – it’s a movie that most people are at least aware of, probably because it contains one of the most iconic and shocking twists in cinematic history.
‘Bruce Willis is dead at the end of Sixth Sense’ became shorthand for twist endings. It was the punchline for jokes about spoilers, right up there with Snape kills Luke and Darth Vader is Dumbledore’s father.
2019 was the year I tried to watch The Sixth Sense for the first time since I was a kid. It’s been so long that I don’t even remember exactly when, but I have to assume at least a good 15 years.
I only remembered two things about the movie – Bruce Willis is dead and Haley Joel Osment’s equally iconic ‘I see dead people’ line.
I was so bored that I stopped watching halfway through. It turns out that The Sixth Sense is a great movie that works exactly once – that magical first time, when you don’t know what it’s about or what’s going to happen.
The movie is a one-trick pony, a delivery vehicle for the twist ending. It painstakingly builds up to its big reveal and, to its credit, it absolutely works. It’s 20 years later and we’re still talking about it.
The problem is that you really can’t watch it again. The surprise of the twist ending is such an integral part of the The Sixth Sense experience that going back afterwards isn’t even half as interesting.
It feels less like a movie and more like a behind-the-scenes feature that explains how they pulled it off. It doesn’t help that the first half is all about this mysterious, creepy kid – what’s his deal? Is this an Omen situation?
Well, again, if you remember your iconic movie moments, you already know the answer – the kid sees dead people. That takes away pretty much all the tension and much of the dread from those early scenes.
All you’re really left with is the craftsmanship and the performances – which, don’t get me wrong, are really good. The scene where Willis tries to earn the kid’s trust and figure out what his deal is? I love that. The kid moves closer when Willis’ psychologist is on the right track, but backs away when he starts to get things wrong. Simple, but very effective visual storytelling.
Also, Toni Collette. Just Toni Collette. She’s great.
Admiration for the craft is a very different kind of enjoyment. I’d much rather watch Unbreakable again, which is just as well made but has more going for it than the big twist. Honestly, the big twist in Unbreakable is one of its weaker elements when compared to the rest.
In general, it’s not a good idea to put all your eggs in the twist ending basket. If you are going to do it, it helps to have a twist as epic and shocking as the one in The Sixth Sense. Even then, you have to make peace with the fact that the movie will only really work once.
Shyamalan keeps trying to recreate the lighting-in-a-bottle success of The Sixth Sense’s twist and it mostly hasn’t worked out. Not only have the twists not been as good or interesting (water is fatal to aliens!), but because of Shyamalan’s reputation as ‘twist ending’ director, audiences have come to expect them.
A twist ending in a Shyamalan movie is like a Tarantino film ending in a gratuitous bloodbath – it’s kind of par for the course by now.
If you’ve never seen The Sixth Sense and are somehow unaware of the twist, then you’re in for a terrific time. Otherwise, go with Unbreakable.