The Sixth Sense (1999)

            ‘The Sixth Sense’ is 1999 supernatural film directed by M. Night Shyamalan. The film starring Bruce Willis as a child psychologist, Dr. Malcolm Crowe and Haley Joel Osment acted as a troubled, isolated boy Cole Sear who has the ability to see and talk to the dead. The story starts with Dr. Malcolm Crowe being shot in the torso by his former Schizophrenic patient Vincent Grey, for not helping him get over with his hallucinations issues ten years ago. Feeling guilty from his failure with Vincent’s case, now Dr. Malcolm dedicated most of his time and energy working on another patient Cole Sear, whose case was similar with Vincent. At the same time, his relationship with his wife Anna Crowe became less intimate and they hardly talk to each other. During one session, after Cole tells his secret to Dr. Malcolm that he has the ability to see the astral bodies (ghosts), who are unaware that they are already dead, Dr. Malcolm thinks he is delusional and considers dropping him. But after obtaining the evidence from Vincent’s sessions old audiotape, he learns that Vincent also possess the same ability and understand Cole was telling the truth all the time. How Dr. Malcolm does helps Cole to overcome his problem at the end forms the rest of the story.

            While watching the film, I notice the parenting style of Lynn Sear towards Cole Sear is ‘Authoritative parenting’. According to Santrock (2013), authoritative parenting style mainly results when there is high parental responsiveness and high parental demands. For example as we see in the film, Lynn gives Cole the chance to confess anything regarding her bumblebee pendant which belongs to her deceased mother, telling him she found it in his drawer. When Cole states he didn’t took it, thinking he was telling a lie, Lynn strictly ask him to leave the dining table and go to his room. While on the way to his room, he saw an astral body of the previous house owner’s son. Being feared and sweeting, he approached his mother to stay together with her for that night, she agreed and hugs him and notice he has been shaking and scared. This illustrates her love towards him. And there is one particular scene, where Lynn notices there are few signs of physical abuse on Cole’s body. She thought it was done by Cole’s peers at school and she immediately called their parents and ask them to keep their children’s hands away from Cole. There is another scene at end of film, when Cole reveals his secrets about his gift to his mother. Initially, he thought that his mom will think he is some kind of freaks but Lynn clearly states that she will never think his son as such and she eventually realizes her son telling the truth and embrace him.

The film also illustrated the Fear appeal theory. According to Maddux and Rogers (1983), Fear appeal is a kind of strategy by motivating people to take a particular action by arousing their fear. As we see in the film, Cole was very frightened by seeing those astral beings moving around same like other living beings. The reason for them to come near Cole is because Cole can see and hear them and they wanted him to help them fulfill their desire so they can find to light to enter spiritual world. Some of these astral beings were actually physically abuse Cole which causes him to become phobia all the time. In order to avoid fear, Cole started to help those spirits as suggested by Dr. Malcolm. The first ghost he helps was the little girl called Kyra Collins who just recently died. He travelled with Dr. Malcolm to her funeral reception and gives a videotape to her father. Then everyone watches the video which contains the shocking evidence that Kyra’s mother had been slowly killed her by adding cleaning fluid in her food. By doing so Cole has rescued Kyra’s younger sister from being the next victim. Thus, Kyle’s soul became peace and enters the other dimension.
 

As I’m watching this movie for first time, I really didn’t expect there will be the twist at the ending which reveals that Dr. Malcolm is also a ghost and he had been died on the day Vincent Grey shot him. So all this while he was unaware that he had been died and only had been seen and heard by Cole. The screenplay was brilliantly written by M. Night Shyamalan to allow the audiences to feel touched at the end. I personally loved watching this film and would give rating 8 out of 10 for this film.

References:

Maddux, J. E. & Rogers, R. W. (1983). Protection motivation and self-efficacy: A revised theory

of fear appeals and attitude change. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 19 (5), 469-479. doi:10.1016/0022-1031(83)90023-9

Santrock, J.W. (2013). Life Span Development (14th Ed). McGraw- Hill: NY