Film Review || The Sixth Sense (1999)

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One of M. Night Shymalalan’s more notable works, The Sixth Sense follows the story of Dr Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis) a troubled psychiatrist and his unusually haunted patient Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment) a boy with the ability to see dead people. Together they work to abolish the child’s mind of the troubles a sixth sense brings through teamwork.  The chilling foundation bears itself toward the wake of the horror genre style flicks, with its ghostly, gory apparitions, but under the skin it may have more influence than one would initially expect.

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Throughout the course of the plot we are witness to what seems to be a paternal relationship between these characters.  For the first parts, our attentions lie with the psychiatrist and his wife sitting together in the living room, admiring their newly acquired plaque. On it, the city observes the psychiatrist’s work with excellence, and even refers to him as ‘their son’. Afterwards the couple goes upstairs to strip off and have sex only to be rudely interrupted by a former patient.

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The boy himself is the son of a single hardworking mother, whose counterpart is neither seen nor heard of. It could be reasonable to imagine that the child misses this father figure despite having no memory of one. In practise the two characters are often side by side, walking to different places, so examples of the nature of their relations to each other are in proof, especially so when the psychiatrist attends the school play to watch him amongst a crowd of parents.

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While in action it is an unspoken attribute, this relationship allows each character to proceed against their individual predicaments with a confidence that would be absent were not for the other. '...language is the major mechanism through which culture produces and reproduces social meanings.' (Turner, 2006) Parallels between them could be the leading influence behind this, for they both suffer from absences of family or loved ones. The presence they share brings each a space for relief, in so functioning as if they were truly related to one another. The dynamic they bring to the screen is a element undisputed as well.

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Beyond the partnership, there are also other elements that bring the story supposedly together. '...there is a strange tinge of schmaltz which begins to ooze out like ectoplasm towards the end, and finally, as another gore-splattered spectre wanders shyly into shot, there is a terrible temptation to giggle.' (Bradshaw, 1999) Surely there is some setback of plot however, since it is of the horror genre one would expect a mediocum of creepiness to it, which initially works. However nearing the later parts of the film the action takes a more adventurous vibe as the man and boy team up to deliver ghosts to their afterlives. It is this that maybe a lesser attributes of this film, since it wipes out a former chiller that would have succeeded on its own with no resolution at all. '...the image of 'real life' acceptable to that section of bourgeois ideology known as 'the guilty conscious'. Any other image is not acceptable because the 'audience who count' (and obviously they count in other places as well as the cinema) would not recognise themselves in it.' (Williams, 1980)

Bibliography

Bradshaw, Peter. "The Sixth Sense | Reviews | Guardian.Co.Uk Film". Theguardian.com. Guardian News & Media Limited, 1999. Web. 2 May 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/film/News_Story/Critic_Review/Guardian_review/0,,99731,00.html
Turner, G. (2006). Film as Social Practice. Routledge. London. pp. 
Williams, C. (1980). Realism and the Cinema. British Film Institute 1980. London. pp. 180

Figures
Fig 1. Shymalalan, N, M. (1999). The Sixth Sense. [poster] [02/05/17]
Fig 2. Shymalalan, N, M. (1999). The Sixth Sense. [still] [02/05/17]
Fig 3. Shymalalan, N, M. (1999). The Sixth Sense. [still] [02/05/17]
Fig 4. Shymalalan, N, M. (1999). The Sixth Sense. [still] [02/05/17]
Fig 5. Shymalalan, N, M. (1999). The Sixth Sense. [still] [02/05/17]