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adoranymph · 4 years

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I’m not a fan of horror.

I’ve acquired a taste for things that contain horror elements, like Stranger Things, which contains moments of comedic heart and compelling character drama in addition to the horror, more so than say something with similarly disturbing horror moments like Alien or Aliens, and Shawn of the Dead, which is a romantic comedy spin on the traditional zombie apocalypse movie. And I’m more than certainly looking forward to checking out Lovecraft Country when it comes out. I’ve even gotten over my squeamishness concerning the face-melting in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, and the villain aging rapidly and ghoulishly into dust and then exploding in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Actually, one of my favorite movies to watch with my father was the original Predator, probably because it was as much a movie about an alien trophy hunter hunting humans for sport as it was a macho action movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. And unlike Alien and Aliens, didn’t involve that oh-so-disturbing means of procreation we all have come to know and love about xenomorphs. Which means that no, much as I’m chill with the Predator, I still have little desire to watch its crossover with the xenomorph menace, Alien vs. Predator, all the way through. Admittedly, I have, in the past, watched clipped reviews of the Alien movies, including AVP and even AVP Requiem, which I think if I had watched in full would have made me sick. Because my curiosity just gets the better of me from time-to-time, and I know that about myself only too well.

And as much I love Michael Biehn in a James Cameron movie, and was touched by the concept of the found-family storyline in Aliens, I just don’t think I can stomach those chestbursters (ha ha).

I can’t even watch John Hurt reprise his role as “Kane” in a parody of his iconic horror scene in Spaceballs, and, like Shaun of the Dead, that’s a comedy! Even more so than Shaun of the Dead! Well, I do watch the part after when the CB sings, “Hello My Baby,” but by that point the parody of the worst part of that scene is over and done with, and there’s nothing but the joy of a dancing baby alien with Michigan J. Frog’s singing voice coming out of it while John Hurt “Kane” laments, “Oh no! Not again!”

And however compelling The Exorcist is in terms of character…yeah no, not touching that.

It is weird though given how far I’ve come in tolerating horror gore, but that’s just not a line I’m willing to cross yet as of writing this.

But back on track.

Sprinkling this in to counter-balance the PTSD I get from the mere thought of xenomorphs.

A few weeks ago, I got a taste for a different kind of horror, and honestly the kind I’ll take over gore in a heartbeat, even if both equally can get stuck in my head to an ugly degree. And that was rewatching M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense. Probably because I got it in my head to watch Ari Aster’s Midsommar, and I still needed something else to fill out my creep-factor quota. I thought about backpedaling and watching his film before that, Hereditary, but I already know that that one ends far more bleakly (compared to Midsommar, depending on how you look at it, mind), and I needed something that was creepy and tragic, but had an ending that positively affirmed itself.

Then I remembered that The Sixth Sense sort of did that, and it had been a while since I had seen it, but I remembered it from as far back as childhood, me with my parents, adamantly not understanding how they could be fans of things like Alien and Aliens. More than that, I remember actually being able to enjoy Sixth Sense somewhat, even then. Appreciate it for its horror elements and moments of tragedy, rather than shrink away from it.

So I that’s what I did. And for all that Shyamalan has done (botching the first attempt at a live-action adaptation of Avatar: the Last Airbender chief among them), this one still gets me in the feels. Helps, I suppose, that I faced certain deaths and griefs at a far tenderer age than I was “meant to”, but even so, what Shyamalan does best, he does best here. And probably in Unbreakable and even Split too, but I haven’t seen those, and apparently after all that, Glass got panned so…yeah.

Still, if nothing else, it was fun to remember that Toni Collette was in this, and now that I’ve grown and seen her in things like Little Miss Sunshine, and clips of–that’s right, Hereditary–not be surprised, but no less pleased for her performance. Not only is she in a Shyamalan film that works its earmarks to its advantage, but she sells her character as a single mom at the end of her rope, with both a son, Cole, going through a difficult time that they can’t talk about, considering the kid knows what she’d think if he told her he sees dead people, and haunted by the death of her mother with whom she clearly had a difficult relationship. Not saying that this still couldn’t have worked, but given what The Happening did to Mark Wahlberg, color me double-rainbow impressed.

Bruce Willis too. Plus he had the advantage of working with Shyamalan on Unbreakable. So he probably knew how to play things in either situation. That and it’s honestly not a badly written character, all things considered, any more than Toni Collette’s character was. Or, even if it was, again, he sold it with his performance. He has a handle on subtle gravitas as much as he does going toe-to-toe with Alan Rickman (rest in peace) playing a terrorist.

Picked this one for the nostalgic fondness of, “Rent it on video. DVD’s also an option!”

Then you have Haley Joel Osment as Cole. And again, given he’s supposed to be this awkward kid with the added burden that he can see ghosts when no one else can and they scare him and even if he tells someone no one will believe him, any stiffness that comes with the Shyamalan style makes sense here. Death makes everything…stiff. Moreover, he sells it too. I get a lump in my throat just thinking of that moment when, after he’s at least told Bruce Willis’s character, as his therapist, about his secret, he tearfully demands, “How can you help me if you don’t believe me?”

Then there’s the revelation itself of the probably reason the ghosts come to him in the first place. Even if they’re not appearing to him with any conscious desire, some subconsciousness of their incorporeality compels them.

They need help.

In death, they’re lost, but maybe, as Cole’s still alive, there are loose ends he can tie off that they can’t. Not that he should, or even can–like I’m not sure what good he can do for that deceased housewife who clearly committed suicide to escape her abusive husband–but when he’s visited by the girl who’s mother poisoned her to death in a little fit of Munchausen-By-Proxy Syndrome, and he goes to her wake, finds the tapes that prove her mother’s guilt, gives them to her father, and the father confronts the mother about it, that got me more even than it did when I was younger and still trying to wrap my head around the concept of mothers poisoning their daughters.

That’s when things start to turn around for Cole. It’s still scary, but he takes that leap of faith, if you will, and one of the last times you see him with a dead person he’s conversing with them rather normally. Going over lines with them where he gets to play Arthur in a reenactment of the legend of the sword being pulling from the stone. You don’t even realize they’re another ghost until his teacher asks him who he was talking to and the ghost turns her head and you see the burn on the other side that obviously came from the fire that killed her. There’s just something so pure and honest in that, the idea of not only facing your fears, but doing so for the sake of lost souls who otherwise have no other hope because they’re dead.

After that is the one-two punch feels conclusion.

One being Cole not only confessing to his mother at last that he sees dead people, and her clearly starting to freak out about it, until he tells her that, “Grandma says, ‘hi’.” And communicates to her something that her mother never got to tell her herself. Of course, after thoughts of, “Oh dear lord, my son is insane,”, when the proof that Cole has indeed been talking to her mother’s spirit, that goes out the window in favor of,

“Do I make her proud?”

and she just cries and she and her son hug it out. And again, Toni Collette sells it.

Then you have the revelation of Bruce Willis’s character: he was dead the whole time! His wife wasn’t just distancing herself from him and then maybe cheating on him, he was dead and she was a widow who was simply trying to find love again. A moment of horror, and then tragedy, and then bittersweet letting-go all in the last few frames of the film. There’s the two in the one-two punch.

Not to mention my first experience of a “Shyamalan twist”. One that was set up well. Scenes constructed to lead you into thinking that of course he’s alive, details you glaze over, and then you realize, “Oh sh**.”

Which was probably part of the problem with some of his later works, where the twist became synonymous with his style, so sometimes it felt like they were put in there in future movies of his without any real rhyme or reason other than that the public were expecting them and thus somehow obligatory to the script.

Just as I haven’t seen Unbreakable, or Split, and certainly not Glass, I haven’t seen The Visit, either, though from what I understand, it almost sounds like Shyamalan went back to the same headspace he had here in The Sixth Sense, using the awkwardness that seems to come out in his work to an advantage in the found footage format. And the twist was apparently actually hilarious. Which is nice. Good for him.

Not everything someone makes is going to be a hit, even if they’re getting paid for it. But when things are a hit, sometimes, they hit so well that it can make up for all the misses. Or almost make up for them.

Honestly, Sixth Sense is, ultimately, the only Shyamalan film I’ve seen in full. But I enjoyed it no less this time, in fact, enjoyed it more now that I have a better understanding of death and grief and loss.

Guess that’s kind of a weird thing to say, but it’s that same kind of “enjoy” that comes from feeling like someone understands something about something you understand, and maybe even feel a little bit less alone for it. Not only did I experience a lot of grief as a preteen, but before that, I was the weird one that most everyone else at school generally avoided if not viciously teased, with the exception of a few fair-weather friends. All these elements and story beats used to creepy effect in Sixth Sense, along with that sense that some horror doesn’t so much horrify me as actually make my own life seem brighter rather than darker, made for a viewing experience that I place value in as I write this. (Especially given right now we are all apparently living a Stephen King novel right now.)

So even if I still can’t handle body horror to the degree of stuff like Alien or Aliens, or David Cronenberg’s The Fly (much as I would love to see Jeff Goldblum in all his 80s hair awkward nerd glory as he romances Geena Davis), there is some horror I can handle. And figuring out why is yet one more thing that I place value in.

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Sixth Sense Post I'm not a fan of horror. I've acquired a taste for things that contain horror elements…

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