MovieChat Forums > The Sixth Sense (1999) Discussion > Did anyone go in knowing NOTHING?

Did anyone go in knowing NOTHING?


Watching this movie again, i realized that it essentially plays as if we're not even supposed to KNOW that Cole sees ghosts. The famous synopsis of the movie is actually revealed pretty slowly up until the iconic line. Now, im sure M Night assumed this would be the main marketing plot point and just wrote it as a slow-burner because thats what he envisioned, but i wonder if back in 1999 there were some people who saw the movie without knowing anything about it. They would then have gotten TWO twists.

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I saw it the first day it came out wide, and had NO IDEA. We had to go back the next day and watch it again. This is one movie that drummed up its business via these kinds of 2nd -- "omg wtf did we NOT see?!?!" -- visits to the theater.

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Fear not for the future; weep not for the past -- Percy Bysshe Shelley
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I don't remember what I 'knew' prior to watching it. I first saw it the year it came out. I was 9 years old, and my parents took my sister and I to see it in theater.

I don't remember being surprised by the fact the kid saw dead people, but to be fair my biggest memories of the movie are just how scared sh!tless I was and the subsequent nightmares lol. I remember the bleeding woman in the bike helmet outside the car, following the traffic accident and the boy saying something along the lines of someone died in the accident, the terrifying little girl ghost who puked all over in the tent fort at the wake, Bruce Willis' character trying to talk to his wife (while she was asleep? iirc), and then at the end him realizing oh hey I'm dead, no wonder my wife can't hear me, but I had no idea about that twist up until the moment it was revealed. Or at least I don't think I did. It's been 17 years. Probably the only reason I remember any of the movie was because it scared me so much. *shrug*

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I went in knowing absolutely nothing and figured out he was a ghost straight away.

It's still a great film but the twist is very easy to see - put yourself in the mindset of the writers and you'll see that the shooting at the start is pointless unless it means he is dead. So I picked up on the twist as soon as he was shot.

Same goes for Scream 4, I theorised the Killer's identity and motive within the first 10 minutes but when I mention this I get called a liar because people think it's impossible to predict - it's not impossible, you just had to think from a writer's point of view as to who could be used this time and why.

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My wife and I saw this on its second weekend back in ‘99. We’d heard it was scary, but had no idea about the twist. We were both blown away. It’s since become fashionable to claim, “Oh, I figured it out right away”, but I think most people are full of beans. They just don’t want to admit they were outsmarted by a movie.

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I saw it in theaters.

All I knew was from the car wreck scene...and mostly that was from the original trailer.

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I didn't see it til a few years after it came out. Though mostly because at the time I went to a Christian School where most everyone in the class refused to watch horror movies and also because I wasn't a member of message boards at the time. Back then my parents had the Program AOL which would only allow me 2 hours of internet time. And I also couldn't watch videos online cause it was dialup internet which doesn't have strong enough connection to do that.

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i saw it in theaters on the day it came out so no one spoiled it for me. Everybody kept asking me how it was and I would say you have to see it for yourself.

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Same here.

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Lucky! I saw it about a week after it first came out and managed to not have it spoiled for me. So the night we went to see it there we all were, enjoying the movie and right after Cole Sear tells Dr. Malcolm that he can see dead people, this asshole stood up in the theater and yelled "Bruce Willis is a ghost!" and ran out of the theater. Not cool at all.

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