The Sixth Sense arrived in August 1999 as a ghost story with a child at its center, and it left as the second-highest-grossing film of the year. M. Night Shyamalan wrote and directed it. Bruce Willis plays Malcolm Crowe, a Philadelphia child psychologist shot in his own home by a former patient, Vincent Gray, on the night the film opens. The next fall, Crowe is working with Cole Sear, a nine-year-old who reminds him of Vincent. The boy has a secret. The film’s tagline promises that not every gift is a blessing.
Trailer, via Paramount Network.
Haley Joel Osment and the Cupboard
Haley Joel Osment plays Cole Sear. Shyamalan was unsure about him at first. He later described the boy’s video audition as “this really sweet cherub, kind of beautiful, blond boy.” Shyamalan wanted something darker and more brooding for the part. He cast Osment anyway, and said the actor “nailed it with the vulnerability and the need … He was able to convey a need as a human being in a way that was amazing to see.”
That read is the film’s engine. Cole is not a haunted house. He is a small boy in a quiet house with a mother who cannot see what is wrong. Toni Collette plays Lynn Sear, and the role was nearly Marisa Tomei’s. Michael Cera auditioned for Cole. Liam Aiken was offered the part and turned it down.
The cupboard scene at the birthday party is where the film stops being polite. Bullies see that Cole is afraid of a cupboard and lock him inside. He screams about someone in there with him. He faints, and when he is released he appears to have been physically assaulted. His mother attributes the harm to the bullies. That gap between what Lynn can see and what her son can see is the whole movie in one sequence.
A Psychologist Who Cannot Fix Himself
Willis was cast as part of a deal to compensate the studio for his role in the implosion of Broadway Brawler the year before. That is a business fact, and it does not matter on screen. What matters is that Crowe is a man trying to correct an old failure. Vincent Gray breaks into his house, accuses him of failing him, shoots him and then kills himself. Crowe takes Cole’s case because the boy reminds him of Vincent. He also wants to reconcile with his wife Anna, played by Olivia Williams, who has gone cold and distant since the shooting.
The film gives Crowe a professional vocabulary for a problem that is not professional. Cole tells him he sees dead people. Crowe’s first move is diagnosis. He thinks Cole is schizophrenic, may need to be institutionalized, and considers dropping the case.
Then he listens to an audiotape from a session with Vincent. On it, a man begs for help in Spanish. Vincent was supposedly alone in the room. That is the turn. Crowe decides Cole is telling the truth, and tells him to try communicating with the ghosts and helping them, so the fear will loosen its grip.
Kyra Collins and the Videotape
The film’s best-constructed episode belongs to a ghost, not to Crowe. Cole finds Kyra Collins, a female child ghost, vomiting. He works out who she is. He goes with Crowe to the funeral reception at her home. Kyra died recently after a long illness. In her room, she guides Cole to a videotape, and he gives it to her father. The tape shows that her mother poisoned Kyra’s food.
Mischa Barton plays Kyra. The sequence is short and it is the cleanest piece of storytelling in the film. A dead child solves her own murder through a living one, and the mechanism is a piece of household technology. No séance, no Latin, no candlelight. A videotape.
What the Film Gets Right
The Sixth Sense was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay for Shyamalan, Best Supporting Actor for Osment and Best Supporting Actress for Collette. It grossed over $672 million worldwide. It is Shyamalan’s highest-grossing film to date, and it made him a preeminent filmmaker of thrillers. It also introduced audiences to his affinity for twist endings.
The craft is real. The film runs 107 minutes and rarely wastes one. It is a mystery, a thriller and a drama at once, and it keeps its scares in daylight and in kitchens rather than in fog.
- Willis plays Malcolm Crowe, the psychologist.
- Osment plays Cole Sear, the boy who sees the dead.
- Collette plays Lynn Sear, Cole’s mother.
- Williams plays Anna Crowe, Malcolm’s wife.
- Donnie Wahlberg plays Vincent Gray, the former patient.
- Mischa Barton plays Kyra Collins, the poisoned child.
The supporting cast also includes Trevor Morgan as Tommy Tammisimo, Peter Anthony Tambakis as Darren, Jeffrey Zubernis as Bobby, Bruce Norris as Stanley Cunningham, Glenn Fitzgerald as Sean, Greg Wood as Mr. Collins.
The Twist Does the Work
Here is the argument against the film’s reputation. The Sixth Sense is remembered for one thing, and that thing is a structural trick. Strip the ending away and the middle is a well-acted procedural about a therapist and a patient. The Kyra Collins episode is the only stretch that stands entirely on its own. The rest of the film is built to be re-read.
That is not a crime. It is a limitation. A film that only improves on the second viewing is a film that was withholding on the first. Shyamalan’s script is careful, and the care is visible. You can feel the seams where information is being kept from you. The quiet scenes between Crowe and Anna, which should carry the emotional weight of a marriage in trouble, play as puzzles instead.
Osment is the reason the film survives that scrutiny. He is not doing a horror performance. He is doing a lonely-kid performance, and the fear is a layer on top of it. When he finally tells Crowe what he sees, the line lands because the boy has been carrying it alone for a long time. Collette matches him in a smaller part. Her Lynn is exhausted and out of answers, and the film never lets her in on the joke.
Where the $672 Million Came From
The commercial story is easy to explain and worth stating plainly. The Sixth Sense was released by Buena Vista Pictures through its Hollywood Pictures banner on August 6, 1999. It was well received by critics. It became the second-highest-grossing film of 1999. A ghost story with no franchise behind it, no established director, and a child in the lead did that on word of mouth and one very well-guarded secret.
That is the part worth respecting. The film’s marketing never gave away the ending, and audiences kept the secret for each other. In 1999 that was still possible. Twenty-seven years on, it is the reason the twist became a cultural event rather than a punchline.
He was able to convey a need as a human being in a way that was amazing to see.
Our verdict is that The Sixth Sense is a very good film with a very famous ending, and the two are not the same thing. The performances are better than the construction. Osment and Collette carry scenes that the script leaves thin. Shyamalan’s direction is confident and his writing is clever, sometimes to its own cost. The film’s reputation has been inflated by the twist and deflated by everything Shyamalan made afterward, and neither reaction is fair to what is actually on screen.
It is a mystery, a thriller and a drama, and it is best when it forgets it is a mystery. The Kyra Collins videotape is the proof. A dead girl, a living boy, a tape in a bedroom. No trick required.
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