THE SIXTH SENSE

Not every gift is a blessing.

5Seeing the light: Bruce Willis and his young charge Haley Joel Osmont finally grasp that perception is not always reality.

M. Night Shyamalan's THE SIXTH SENSE successfully takes one of our deepest psychological fears and plays it to the fullest. In the movie, nine-year-old Cole Sear (Academy Award nominee Haley Joel Osmont) is endowed with the ability to "see dead people". His psychologist Dr. Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis) tries his level best to help the boy cope with his unusual 'gift', not realizing that he is the one who really needs help.
How do you perceive THE SIXTH SENSE? As a horror movie? If so, then you may be missing the point. The movie, believe it or not, was meant to be a domestic drama - horror, in this case, is not a theme, but an undertone - exploring relationships between husband and wife as well as between mother and son.
The aforementioned psychological fear, by the way, is the fear of abandonment.