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	Kathleen Kennedy Frank Marshall Barry Mendel
Starring	Bruce Willis Haley Joel Osment Toni Collette Olivia Williams
Cinematography	Tak Fujimoto
Edited by	Andrew Mondshein
Distributed by	Buena Vista Pictures
Release dates	August 6, 1999
Running time	107 min.
Language	English
Budget	$55,000,000
Box office	$672,806,292

The Sixth Sense is a 1999 Academy Award-nominated psychological horror film written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan that tells the story of Cole, a troubled, isolated boy (Haley Joel Osment) who claims to be able to see and talk to the dead (with the famous line, "I see dead people"), and an equally troubled child psychologist (Bruce Willis) who tries to help him. The film established Shyamalan as a writer and director, and introduced the cinema public to his signatures: his appearance in Hitchcock-like cameos, his liking for twist endings, and his use of the color red as a symbol of strangeness or otherness.

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 brandishing a gun saying, "I don't want to be afraid anymore." Vincent is upset that Crowe did not help him, and Crowe recognizes Vincent as a former patient whom he once 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.

The next fall Malcolm is shown working with another frightened boy, nine-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 apparently begins to neglect his wife, with whom his relationship is falling apart.

Malcolm earns Cole's trust and Cole ultimately eventually confides in him that he is clairvoyant and can "see dead people." Though Malcolm is 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 realizes this one night as he is listening to one of his old tapes, recorded while he was treating Vincent, and hears the pleading voices of dead people in the background. 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 at first does not want to heed this advice, as the ghosts terrify him, but he soon decides to try it.

File:Movie i see dead people.jpg

I...I secretly like getting laid.

Cole finally talks to one of the ghosts, a girl who appears in his bedroom very sick. He finds out where the girl — Kyra Collins (Mischa Barton) — lived and goes to her house during her funeral reception. Kyra's ghost appears and gives Cole a box, which is opened to reveal a videotape when Cole gives it to Kyra's father. The tape reveals that while Kyra was bedridden with illness, her mother was poisoning her food, and this in fact was what led to Kyra's death (this behavior has been suggested as Munchausen syndrome by proxy or factitious disorder). Now believing in his ability to use his gift to positive effect, Cole confesses his secret to his mother, Lynn (Toni Collette). Although his mother at first does not believe him, Cole soon tells Lynn that her own mother (Cole's grandmother) once went to see her perform in a dance recital one night when she was a child, and that 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.

His faith in himself now restored as a result of his success with Cole, Malcolm returns to his home, where he finds his wife asleep on the couch with the couple's wedding video on in the background, not for the first time. As she sleeps Anna's hand releases Malcolm's wedding ring, revealing the twist ending of the film: 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 — rectifying his failure to understand Vincent — is finally complete. Recalling Cole's advice about talking to his wife while she's asleep so that she'll have to listen, Malcolm speaks to her and releases her to move on with her life, and frees himself to leave behind the world of the living.

Trivia

• All of the clothes Malcolm wears during the movie are items he wore or touched the evening before his death. This included his overcoat, his blue sweater and the different layers of his suit.
• The left-handed Bruce Willis 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 clues of Malcolm's true state, the camera zooms slowly towards Crowe's face when Cole says he "sees dead people." In a DVD special feature the filmmakers mention they initially feared this shot would be a giveaway, but 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 where the dead are present: 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 basement 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 for the monsters that inhabit the woods surrounding the village.

Cast

• Bruce Willis as Dr. Malcolm Crowe
• Haley Joel Osment as Cole Sear
• Toni Collette as Lynn Sear
• Olivia Williams as Anna Crowe
• Donnie Wahlberg as Vincent Grey
• Glenn Fitzgerald as Sean
• Mischa Barton as Kyra Collins
• M. Night Shyamalan as Dr. Hill

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? directed by David Winning was an 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 distribution rights to Spyglass Entertainment, and kept only a 12.5% distribution fee for itself.

Reception

The film had a production budget of approximately $40 million (plus $25 million for prints and advertising). 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, ranking it 25th on the list of box-office money earners 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 five horror films that have been nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award. The others are The Exorcist, Jaws, A Clockwork Orange and The Silence of the Lambs. The Silence of the Lambs is the only winner of the award.

By vote of the members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, The Sixth Sense was awarded the Nebula Award for Best Script in 1999.

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. In the television show Scrubs, the Janitor holds a grudge against Dr. Cox for telling him the ending of the movie before he finished watching it. 50 First Dates has Drew Barrymore's character repeating the same day over and over, which includes a watching of The Sixth Sense for "the first time".
• In the episode "Torn Between Two Hannahs" on Disney's hit show Hannah Montana, Lilly (Emily Osment — Haley Joel Osment's younger sister) responds to Miley's lament about her cousin being evil by referencing her brother' character: "Oh, please. Next you're going to be saying "she sees dead people!".
• The musical version of Legally Blonde has the character Paulette say "I see dead people!" upon seeing the ghostly apparitions of Serena, Margot and Pilar.
• Scrubs episode "My Screw Up" was a direct homage to the film, with Dr. Cox's best friend dying shortly into the episode but only being revealed to be dead at the end, while attending his funeral.
• The catch phrase "I see dead people" is used as a cheat-code in Warcraft 3 to reveal the whole map.
• In Fallout Tactics the player can encounter a mutated cow (brahmin) surrounded by ghostly cows who says that he "sees dead brahmin".

External links

• The Sixth Sense at IMDb
• The Sixth Sense at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Sixth Sense - M. Night Shyamalan Online
• 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