10 Popular Horror Movies That Really Weren't Scary At All

7. The Sixth Sense

The Sixth Sense is a film so light on anything approaching conventional genre frights that it's easy to make the argument it isn't really a horror film at all.

M. Night Shyamalan's Oscar-nominated masterwork is really more of a character drama with a faint horror spicing, and even then, Shyamalan favours an unseen eeriness for the most part.

There's no arguing with the cleverness of Shyamalan's big narrative conceit nor the wonderful performances on offer, but as richly atmospheric as the film might be, its supernatural element is localised so fundamentally to protagonist Cole (Haley Joel Osment) that his fear doesn't really transpire to the viewer.

And this may in many ways explain the shockingly mainstream appeal of The Sixth Sense, winning over Oscar voters and grossing $672.8 million worldwide as it did - it's really a quiet, moody drama that occasionally flirts with horror.