4) The Sixth Sense (1999)
The end of M. Night Shyamlan’s first (and, to be honest, last) great movie may have been discussed to death, but there’s a reason that a cliché is a cliché – and this is that it keeps proving itself to be true. The Sixth Sense is good from beginning to end, but the ending quite literally re-wrote the entire film and has deservedly been referenced, parodied and reviewed almost continually ever since.
It is, by now, probably impossible to watch The Sixth Sense without already knowing what happens at the end. Not only has there never been an ending easier to describe than that of this movie, but the phrase ‘Bruce Willis is dead” became second only to telling someone who Keyser Söze really is (see below) in the stakes of “how to be an absolute d–k to someone who wants to enjoy a movie.” Still, readers were warned in the introduction, so it is legitimate to discuss it here.
Malcolm Crowe (Willis) has seen his young patient Cole (Haley Joel Osment) through learning to give the dead people that he continually sees the help they are seeking, and with Cole having come to terms with his unusual situation, the time comes for doctor and patient to say goodbye. Just before they part, Cole suggests to Malcolm that he try talking to his wife, from whom he has become estranged, while she is asleep.
When Malcolm gets home, he finds Anna asleep, their wedding video playing in the background. Aloud, Anna asks Malcolm why he left her – the assumption being that Anna feels Malcolm to have prioritised his job over his relationship with her. Before he can answer, Anna drops a wedding ring, and Malcolm sees that she is still wearing hers. It is his wedding ring.
Suddenly, Malcolm recalls Cole first telling him about his problem (the infamous “I see dead people” scene), and specifically that Cole said the people he sees don’t know that they’re dead. A series of moments from the film flash up, outlining all the times in which Malcolm thought that his wife was ignoring him or shutting him out, and every time that he tried to open a door, or attract someone’s attention and failed.
With awful, dawning realization, Malcolm recognizes that these moments have not been the result of the other person refusing to interact with him: It is simply because he is not there. Malcom died in the opening sequence in which he was shot by a deranged ex-patient – an event we were originally allowed to believe he had survived – but had been unable to leave the realm of the living. He is able to interact with Cole because of Cole’s gift, but the audience are now made aware of the fact that was there all along – that Malcolm never did actually interact with anyone else.
The effect of this realization was, in a word, shocking. There was quite literally a sense that Shyamalan had invaded the audiences’ minds, and somehow altered their entire perception of their surroundings. Satisfying and appalling in equal measure, these four minutes embodied film-watching at its absolute finest.
This success was formalized by the Academy, from which The Sixth Sense received six nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actor. The Sixth Sense does not belong to a genre that often gains much recognition from the Powers That Be over at the Academy, and it was a fitting verification of Shyamalan’s clear talent.
Unfortunately, however, Shyamalan had essentially set the bar too high. It is true that no other director has truly achieved the level of twist factor of The Sixth Sense, but this can also be said of Shyamalan. He continued to rely on twists in his following films (Unbreakable, The Village, The Lady in the Water….) but never again was he to produce anything like this level of ingenuity and finesse. He had, alas, priced himself out of his own market. No other ending on this list can take credit for having finished not just the movie, but the director’s career as well.