Screenwriting & Film Studies

The Sixth Sense 1999

The story

“Dr. Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis) is a child psycho­lo­gist whose new patient has a problem far outside his usual area of expertise. Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment) is six-years-old and claims to see the spirits of dead people all around him.

It seems that Cole has psychic powers and can channel the ghosts of those who were troubled. Cole doesn’t under­stand his powers, and he has little control over them; he’s constantly terri­fied by what he sees, and Dr. Crowe is the only one with whom he feels he can share this secret.

However, as the doctor digs deeper into Cole’s strange powers, it leads to strange and unex­pected consequences for both of them. ” Mark Deming, from Rotten Toma­toes

About the making of “The Sixth Sense”

Shyamalan talks about the idea of the ‘sling­shot’ in story structure

The Sixth Sense 1999 was written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan.

The scene

There are many ways in which this scene could have been dram­at­ised but the inven­tion of a ‘game’, a common child psychologist’s ploy, gives it both a focus and fulcrum.

The progress of the scene – and Crowe’s failure – are liter­ally acted out and the camera move­ment subtly under­lines this.

David Clough ©2011