Yes, We Know, You See Dead People

It’s hard to really love the works of M. Night Shyamalan. The director has been working for over thirty years in the industry and while he’s had some massive hits, especially with his early films, it’s also a fact that his filmography very quickly, and quite suddenly, dropped off. Most would likely rave about his early hits, The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, but then just about everyone in the audience probably found one film or another that just didn’t work for them and they jumped ship. Signs with its preachy plotline and nonsensical time-loop logic was my stop, but I know others who couldn’t take the stupidity and boring plotting of The Village, or the, “oh my god, why are the trees killing us?” melodrama of The Happening. Eventually the director’s films became more of a joke than event viewing, and he hasn’t really recovered since.

A big issue is that Shyamalan really loves his twist endings. Every film he makes has to have a twist. I’d bet he thinks of the twist first and then goes and writes a movie based around that twist, whether (by the time he gets to it) the film works with the twist or not. The method worked with his first major film, The Sixth Sense, but that’s because the story is largely simple and effective even before the twist happens. The twist is great, yes, but the movie wasn’t just the twist; it was an engaging and interesting character study for the entire time before that.

This is what Shyamalan’s later films lack: a hook to get you interested and watching that doesn’t have to revolve around the rug pull he’s plotted for you at the end of the movie. In fact, I’d say that The Sixth Sense works best because you didn’t even know a twist was coming. This film, released in 1999, came before everyone realized Shyamalan was a one-trick pony. Now we know and, every time, we’re on the lookout, waiting for what’s inevitably coming. And the thing about a twist is that it doesn’t work when you expect it. You can only pull that trick so many times and Shyamalan has pulled it every time, in every film, and it sucks.

But not with The Sixth Sense. The film is great, even now, all these years later, acting as a solid showcase for an up-and-coming director working with fantastic actors on a story that was engaging on multiple levels. If Shyamalan could have continued making these kinds of film, deep character studies that let you just enjoy the story for what it was, I think we’d all still hold the director in high regard. But the days of waiting for him to change his tune are long past as we all know how he is. So we can ignore his later films and appreciate the filmmaker he used to be, like with The Sixth Sense.

(And, obviously, there are going to be spoilers for this film because it’s 25 years old and you’ve likely already seen it. If you haven’t, you weren’t going to anyway.)

The film focuses on Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis), a child psychologist who suffers a home invasion from a previous patient, Vincent Grey (Donnie Wahlberg), who Crowe was unable to help. Crowe ends up getting shot, and we see him bleeding in his wife’s arms as the scene fades to black. Some time later Crowe is up and about once more, seemingly called in by a Mrs. Lynn Sear (Toni Collette) to help her son, Cole (Haley Joel Osment), who is struggling. This is exactly the kind of case Crowe was good at, so he takes it on to help the boy.

Cole is scared, all the time, and as he opens up to Crowe we learn why: he, quite literally, sees dead people. He seems them everywhere, all looking as they did when they died, sometimes horribly mangled as what killed them left them in a sense or purgatory. While most other child psychologists would dismiss this out of hand, Crowe talks to Cole, advises him, tries to help him work through this. And over time Cole does begin to feel better. It just might be that while he failed to help Vincent, Crowe can help this similarly troubled kid find his way through his own pain.

For most of the film the story is about Cole. Malcolm feels guilty that he couldn’t help Vincent, and presumably that guilt has weighed on him. We see it expressed through a lack of communication Malcolm has with his wife, Anna (Olivia Williams), and the trouble they’re having. He wants to help Cole, no matter what, so he can relieve his own guilt and find some kind of peace with his professional life. Save one kid to redeem the mistakes with another is what we assume is his plotline.

And it is, but that’s also where the twist comes in: Malcolm didn’t survive the gunshot. As we eventually learn, first hinted at by Cole and then realized by Malcolm, our protagonist is one of the dead people Cole sees. Malcolm doesn’t realize he’s dead, doesn’t know what happened to him, so he’s been going on about his life as if it’s nothing. His wife won’t talk to him because she doesn’t realize he’s there. He’s a wisp, walking around without leaving an impact. But he does help Cole and you learn that the guilt holding him to this case is what’s actually holding him to this plane.

That is, frankly, fantastic writing. It’s a bait and switch that doesn’t feel like one. It feels earned. It feels right. Malcolm working through guilt over a failed case is a solid character storyline whether he’s dead or not. The film is set up to disguise the fact that Crowe is dead, yes, and that keeps you from immediately figuring it out, but that doesn’t change the fact that his character arc works well no matter how you view the piece. It’s just a solid bit of character writing that wouldn’t be out of place in any other kind of film.

That is, of course, the part that Shyamalan doesn’t seem to have figured out. He understands he needs great actors to sell his story. Willis and Osment are fantastic in this film, working well together and selling the soulful story for all its worth. And Shyamalan does have a fantastic eye for shots and angles. This is a well crafted movie, start to finish, and Shyamalanis able to craft a deep, moody movie as if it’s effortless. He likens himself to a modern day Hitchcock which, ehhh? But he is solidly good in his own right, at least when he can get out of his own way.

But then when it comes to twists he just can’t help himself. The twist in The Sixth Sense is earned because, in a way, it doesn’t feel like much of a twist at all when you go back and watch the film again. We literally see Malcolm die in the first scene of the film but because he’s up and about, working again, in the next scene, we don’t even realize it. Everything that comes from that moment on elaborates upon that setup without ever violating it. Shyamalan crafts the movie to earn and respect its own setup, making its twist natural and the only real way the film could have ended. It’s expertly crafted. This is Shyamalan at his finest.

But most of his films don’t do that. They go for a rug pull out of left field that isn’t earned. They aren’t set up right, they don’t construct their flow. They just suck. I wish the director could have continued making interesting character studies regardless of whether there was a “twist” at the end or not because this kind of film is where he finds his true magic. He gave us a couple of solid movies, this one especially, and that’s great. I think we all just have to admit that here, this film at the start of his career, is where the director truly reached his height.