Watching The Sixth Sense on Netflix recently was a bizarre experience. I was sure I had seen The Sixth Sense, but I had no idea when. Nothing about the movie looked familiar. I remembered no scenes, no characters, no images. As soon as I saw Bruce Willis though, I knew his character was dead. For the rest of the movie, I observed how M. Night Shyamalan created the illusion that Dr. Malcolm Crowe was alive.
The only thing I knew (well, besides “I see dead people”) was that Bruce Willis’ character was dead. Why do I know that? When did I learn this? Is this knowledge so cliche that it’s woven into the fabric of life now?
Despite remembering only two things in this movie, I also see potential influence on my novel Twelve’s Design here. Perhaps I’m only thinking of K-PAX though. The Sixth Sense’s story about a psychologist who suspects a boy is crazy when he sees ghosts and K-PAX’s story about a psychologist who suspects a man is crazy when he’s an alien are oddly similar and both relevant to Twelve’s Design. K-PAX, however, made a much stronger impression on me, so I tend to think it’s the main influence.
I also kept thinking about silly, horror movie parody scripts that I wrote back in middle and high school. For sure if I had ever in fact seen The Sixth Sense, it would have appeared in at least one of those parodies.