“How often do you see them?”

“All the time. They’re everywhere.”

After having seen both Unbreakable and Signs, I decided to watch M. Night Shyamalan’s other highly-regarded classic, The Sixth Sense. The Sixth Sense is a story about a child psychologist by the name of Malcolm, who, after blaming himself for, let’s just say, a failed patient (trying not to spoil anything even though it’s literally at the very beginning of the movie), takes on a child with the same challenges. This boy is named Cole, and he sees dead people.

I would say that between The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs, The Sixth Sense was definitely the weakest of the bunch, but that’s not really saying much at all. It’s still an excellent movie that I enjoyed pretty much every minute of, and, even after seeing two Shyamalan movies that I didn’t really care for, being Split and Glass, I still respected those movies and saw the quality in them, so it’s hard for me to imagine that Shyamalan has made any truly terrible movies. I know he’s made a few movies here and there, other than those that have gotten decent reception, like The Village, for example, but I’m honestly morbidly curious now to see how he sort of fell off over the years.

Now, onto the actual review. The movie starts off with this really powerful and shocking opening, and from there on, it really sets up the rest of the movie in an interesting way. By far my favorite thing about The Sixth Sense was the relationship between Malcolm and Cole as psychologist and patient, respectively. Right away, it starts off with this fascinating scene between the two of them in their first session (or attempted session, I should say), which really got me into their relationship right away. The thing that kept me so invested in their relationship, though, was how they kind of really needed each other, even though you’d think it would just be Cole that needs Malcolm. Malcolm has problems of his own in his relationship with his wife, and Cole is really the only person who truly sees him and understands him, which I thought was really sweet.

Building off of that, both Bruce Willis and Haley Joel Osment give pretty incredible performances. It’s one of Willis’s more subtle performances that I’ve seen, and because of that, you really see the darkness, or really just sadness, that is deep inside of him. When it comes to Joel Osment, I think it’s safe to say that it’s one of the greatest child performances I’ve ever seen, and that seems to be pretty safe to say, as most of the internet would agree on that. He perfectly encapsulates this young boy who is deeply troubled and just wants to be normal, and the scenes that come with that really put a lot of pressure on him to give an emotional performance, and an emotional performance it was. It’s one of those very rare child performances that perfectly match up with all of the adults in the film.

When it comes to what surprised me the most about The Sixth Sense, I would have to say, as weird as it may sound, that would have to be the dialogue throughout the film, especially with, of course, Malcolm and Cole. I don’t really know how to describe it perfectly, but every conversation they had, I was just hooked. It’s not really banter, but more of just them building a relationship. Every conversation and line of dialogue that they had with one another seemed to matter, deepening both of their characters. All of it was also incredibly interesting, but felt natural. It also never became just exposition, but progressed the story in a meaningful way.

Of course, I have to now talk about the ending, as it’s one of the most famous endings of all time. Unfortunately, I already knew it going in, but that didn’t really impact my viewing experience very much, thankfully. The movie doesn’t solely rely on its powerful ending to make the rest of the movie work, which is why it’s so good. And even though I already knew the ending, it still hit hard.

The main and only negative I have to say about The Sixth Sense is that the pacing could be a bit slow at times. It’s not a movie that bored me at any point in time by any means, but even at just one hour and forty-seven minutes, I think it could have been trimmed down just a tad. There were definitely a couple of scenes, mainly with Cole, that kind of just reiterated his illness, and maybe weren’t fully needed or could have had something added to them to make them more meaningful. Not a big problem whatsoever, just something to point out.

Do I think The Sixth Sense is a masterpiece? No, but it’s a very good and heartfelt movie that I see myself rewatching in the future.