The sixth sense - 1999

I like it. Even more the second time around. Sure, first time there’s the surprise, the final switch, but  the second time I watched it I could pay attention to the details I didn’t know were important. It being an old film I don’t think I can spoil anything for anyone, everybody talking about this movie says the two important things out loud on tv. Anyway, the movie is well made, I liked it. I was really sorry for this poor little kid that was scared to death by his secret visions he could not talk about with anybody, and also for his poor mother who didn’t know what to do, could not understand what his son was going through and was growing desperate. I really liked the mother character, I felt for her a lot, she loved him so much and didn’t know how to make him safe, or happy. She saw wounds on him and thought other kids were responsible, she saw him tremble at the thought of sleeping alone and didn’t know what else to do for him but hug him tight. 

It starts slowly, presenting Dr Malcolm (Bruce Willis), a psychiatrist well known and appreciated who gets shot by a man he could not help. Months later he takes an interest in little Cole (Haley Joel Osment), a child that presents the same problem that man had as a child, and wants to help him, thinking that maybe in a way helping Cole will be like helping him too. He talks to Cole, trying to understand what he’s afraid of. Meanwhile, he appears to have problems at home; his wife doesn’t speak to him, and a guy looks interested in her. 

Now, the first big revelation of the movie is Cole’s secret: before he says it out loud, we didn’t really know what troubled him so much. Now he says it all to Malcolm: I see dead people. Sometimes they don’t even know they’re dead. I see them all the time. 

Of course he’s scared, poor thing, seeing that everywhere, always. He can see the people that were hanged in his school, back in the days when it was a tribunal, or a woman that committed suicide because tired of being abused, presumably by her husband. Of course, if you think of it, they weren’t all that much after all, you’d think that someone who could see dead people would see many many more than that. One could say: maybe he only sees those that don’t know they’re dead so can’t ‘go to the other side’, but what about the hanged people, they don’t know either? 

At first Malcolm thinks he’s delusional, but then he thinks back of the child he couldn’t help, and realizes he had the same exact problem, and he himself can hear the ghosts talking during their session. Malcolm then goes to Cole and asks him: what do they want from you? Cole doesn’t know, because he was always too scare to even wonder about that, but now he thinks about it and next ghost he sees in his bedroom he comes back saying ‘is there something you want to tell me?’ and yes, it turns out this young girl (Mischa Barton) wants him to do a very important thing. Cole goes to her house during the funeral-reception and gives her father a box she gave him. There’s a tape inside showing how the poor girl was poisoned, killed, by a woman that was, or wanted to be, her stepmother. At least now we’re sure that woman won’t do the same to the girl’s little sister. 

That was all very intense. The things that I could watch carefully the second time around was how nobody ever talked or even looked at Malcolm. When we see him in Cole’s house, the mother doesn’t look at him, she goes straight to Cole, and we can see how she’s dressed for home, not at all like a mother having a doctor as a guest.

I liked the drawing scene, when Cole said he draws nice things like rainbows so people don’t freak out, and we see them in his room: kids learn quickly.  

After Malcolm’s help, after he showed that tape to the poor man, Cole decided to take the last step and tell everything to his mother (Toni Collette) . He tells her her secret, and if at first she doesn’t believe him, she changed her mind when Cole tells her a message from her dead mother, the answer to a question she made in front of her grave, which was Do I make you proud? Answer: every day. 

At this point Malcolm goes away, Cole doesn’t need him anymore, so he goes back home and suddenly realizes the truth, that he died that night, when he was shot. His wife is crying. Malcolm talks to her, and she smiles in her sleep, then he goes away. Cool ending. First time you watched it, back then, it was a big surprise, but even now it’s a good scene. It all comes together.