The Sixth Sense set a high bar for emotionally driven thrillers with strong endings

Rating: 8/10 (24 December 2019)

While it's been spoiled to death culturally, it's because The Sixth Sense had such an impactful twist, which has been the benchmark of thrillers since. While there are a couple frustratingly unclear plot points, the broader story, editing, and ending are all excellent. Even before the ending, Shyamalan draws the viewer in by framing it as a character-based story with Malcolm trying to correct for his past mistakes and Cole trying to get through school as the odd kid out. Osment is truly excellent and the best child acting performance I've seen, and Willis is quite good as well. The tension of how Cole will overcome his "gift" and how Malcolm will help both Cole and his marriage keep the energy high throughout, but it is the twist that adds layers to the movie and elevates it. There are plenty of hints and allusions to Malcolm being dead, but it's subtle enough in most of the social scenes to be not given away. I realized the twist about halfway through but was still fascinated to see how Cole's gift would be explained - why is he the only one who can see ghosts? I was really disappointed that was totally ignored. I also think it would've been much more plausible to say that the ghosts don't actually interact with the material world, as the suspension of disbelief that ghosts move things around all the time but nobody ever notices is a little tough. I think the idea of having ghosts live a dreamlike existence where they see what they want to see and are only there as long as they need to solve what was left undone in their life was brilliant and is why the twist adds so much depth to Malcolm's character. The hanging people didn't make much sense in this explanation - they don't see what they want to see and they don't have anything they want to solve, but outside of that the other ghosts followed that idea very well. It's fully deserving of its iconic thriller/twist status, and definitely has enough emotional investment in its characters to be more than just a twist based movie.