10 Movies You Have To Watch TWICE To Understand

M. Night Shyamalan, of all directors, has a way of leaving fans in a state of shock as the credits roll. We wonder how we didn’t see that coming, we feel super accomplished if we did, we pretend that ending was our first guess rather than our fourth or fifth. As such, a second viewing of a Shyamalan movie can be more satisfying in a way.

Never is this more evident than the with The Sixth Sense. Of course, we all know the twist by now: Bruce Willis stars as a child psychiatrist working with Cole Sear, a troubled young boy who claims he can see dead people (they’re not ghosts, but something more than that, unaware that they’re dead). As the story concludes, Willis’ Dr. Malcolm Crowe discovers that he himself is dead, having actually been killed in the shooting perpetrated by a troubled client in the movie’s opening.

This is the brilliance of The Sixth Sense. It isn’t that the movie doesn’t make sense the first time around, as the story is presented in a straightforward fashion. Rather, armed with this information, we appreciate the subtler details so much more on re-watching the movie. Malcolm sits with his wife, even ‘dates’ her at a restaurant, but she doesn’t acknowledge him or answer when he speaks. He believes she’s being distant, soured towards him, but from her perspective, he isn’t really there at all. It’s haunting and beautiful.