Thursday, October 31, 2019

October Movie Binge 2019 - Day 31: The Sixth Sense (1999)


What I love about ending with this movie is that I think it feels so outside of the other spirit films. It, in essence, changed or disrupted the typical view of a haunting movie. Not only does it have the twist (which would become Shyamalan's trademark), but it ended up creating a whole new scare style and character development.

It has the element of a haunting as a dramatic plot device, but the haunting is also at the root of the scares. As I mentioned in previous entries, there is the fine line of there being a deeper moving only using the skin of a haunting, possession, or malicious spirit and the movies that are more about the actual supernatural activity and the story is driven directly by the haunting. Here is where that fine line is danced upon and then broken.

Sadly, though, once you've seen the twist, it takes a little bit away from the movie when watching it again. The nice thing is that you start to see all the little hints and signs of the twist throughout the movie.

1999 was clearly a high point in the release and reinvention of the spirit/possession genre and this one continued the tradition of breaking the mold and upping the ante on this style of filmmaking.


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