Essay, Research Paper: The Sixth Sense Essay

The Sixth Sense was directed and written by M. Night Shayamalan. The film was
part of Spyglass Entertainment and Hollywood Pictures. The two main characters were Malcolm Crowe, played by Bruce Willis, and Cole Sear, played by Haley Joel Osment. The genre of the film is in the horror.
The movie was about a boy who communicates with spirits that don t think they re dead and seeks the help of a child psychologist. The story was set up when Crowe won an award and then was meet by an old patient who then shot Crow. The movie then went to several years later, when Crowe seeks out his next patient Cole, who can see dead people. After spending a lot of time with Cole the complications sink in. The problem is that his wife is ignoring him and is sad at him. I think the climax and the resolution all happen at the same time because at the end we realize that Crowe is actually dead and that explains why only Cole can see him and why his wife is ignoring him. The end of the movie just left you hanging, like what ever happened to Crowe.
The director uses all types of camera angles, but the one that sticks out the most is the cuts back and forth. For instance, they would show the boy and then zoom in on him and then go back out and there would be a ghost sitting there. The way they did this made me scared because I wasn t expecting it. A lot of the things they did with the camera helped in telling the story because you could tell if the people were ghosts or not.
I think the theme of the movie was to make you wonder if there really are people out there that have a sixth sense and if there is another world out there where spirits do not know that they are dead yet. I liked the movie I thought it was really cool with a lot of special effects. I would give it a rating of 4 because it was kind of confusing at first and the ending just kind of left you hanging, like what else happened. Christopher Null, a critic, writes, Another week in 99, another horror film. But will THE SIXTH SENSE really scare you? Despite the title that is more reminiscent of LEPRECHAUN than THE EXORCIST, this is a genuinely creepy film with a solid story, great acting, and a surprise ending that not even a jaded critic like me saw coming. The concept is that young Cole Sear (Osment) sees ghosts, and they torment him night and day, to the point of physical abuse. Desperate for help, he eventually hooks up with brilliant child psychologist Malcolm Crowe (Willis), who tries to help him out. Meanwhile, Cole s mom (Collette) and Malcolm s wife Anna (Williams) have problems of their own relating to the men in their lives. While these subplots are a bit sketchy at first, they do serve a purpose, coming full circle by the end of the picture. Writer/director Shyamalan has a few credits under his belt (nothing I ve ever seen, though), but his skill at combining the supernatural with the everyday here is pretty well-done, and is largely without intense special effects. As for acting, Willis actually does a credible job with his part, for the first time since 12 MONKEYS (1995). Osment -- previously seen as Forrest Gump Jr. in FORREST GUMP, as the kid in the underrated BOGUS, and as Murphy Brown s son -- is stellar in his role. Although he over-enunciates to an extreme, he s an excellent actor, and I hope that will carry over to his adult roles later in life. THE SIXTH SENSE is still a horror/thriller at its heart, so don t expect it to win any great flood of awards. But it s a solid film and the work of a meticulous writer, which is a rare pleasure these days.