10 Genius Movie Moments When Unreliable Narrators Changed EVERYTHING
4. Malcolm Was Dead The Whole Time - The Sixth Sense
These days, since everybody knows that something is coming to turn the film on its head, M. Night Shyamalan movies are almost judged based on the inevitable twist before anything else. Of course, some of these have been better than others, but there is one that stands alone at the top of the list.
The unmistakable director's breakout came with his third outing, The Sixth Sense back in 1999. After surviving a gunshot wound from a former patient, celebrated child psychologist Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis) threw himself into his work, doing everything he could to help troubled youngster, Cole (Haley Joel Osment).
Throughout the film, though they seemed happy before he was attacked, Malcolm's relationship with his wife, Anna (Olivia Williams), had become very strained to the point that they weren't even speaking. However, after Cole revealed to Malcolm his secret, that he could see dead people that didn't even know they were dead, the reason why Crowe's wife continually ignored him made sense.
The incredible moment of realisation came for both character and audience when Malcolm found that his wife had taken her ring off, and everything Cole said replayed in his head. The dead don't know they are dead, they only see what they want to see, and his wife wasn't speaking to him and was depressed not because of anything he had done, but because he wasn't there. Still to this day, one of the greatest twists, and unreliably narrated stories of all time.