THE SIXTH SENSE (1999; w/d M Night Shyamalan)

Light comes on in basement (consciousness arousing in sub-conscious + new life 6 ft under, where hero later sets up office; bulb out in bedroom extinguished consc’ss + sex/life "upstairs") of house on Locust St (abandoned husk of sleeping/dead self), Anna Crowe sensing presence (hero’s feeling-sense intuiting issue in need of resolution); upstairs, celebrating child-psych hubby Malcolm’s recognition as "son" (himself child 2B analyzed [ironically, by another kid]) of Philadelphia (City of Brotherly Love + home of Constitution: contradiction btwn country’s benevolent charter + actual performance as mentor/steward à la Malc himself; hometown also of Indian-born w/d, he returning to roots in order to similarly recreate self) disrupted by intrusion of psychotic ex-patient Vincent Grey (emergence of ambiguity leading to self-investigation) in bthrm (where Crowe sez they shd hang certificate: self-effacement self-doubt rooted in notable failure), whom Malc misdiagnosed as traumatized by parents’ divorce (psychopathology contemporary, mental disorder…) rather'n by visitations by ghosts (…instead of eternal, "spirit"ual).

After murder/suicide, Crowe, fallen from grace, follows similar case (dream replaying waking/archetypal history in order to correct/sort out), "that autumn" ("fall" as well as turning of seasons/going dormant), mtg young Cole Sear (Pun Alert) playing army in church (spiritual conflict), he 9-yr-old whose father split (soldiers à la Gulf War dead: absence of conscious authority permitting irruption of ghosts/dreams into consc theater, Malc Imaginary Father helping boy cross maturational frontier) + whose self-inflicted wounds (à la self-loathing Grey) may be result of tormenting spirits (unresolved conflicts taking physical toll), also called freak (as Grey referred to self, resonating off Malc’s misidentification of him as "Ben Freakin’/Friedkin" [nod to Exorcist dir, as in later green-pea-puking girl + script-only spinal tap, later scene of Poltergeists in kitchen cop from that film) by egotistical actor-(not-)friend Tommy (Crowe’s own self-deluding "act").

Cole denounces teacher’s glossy history of school (once used for hangings: film’s nods also to Shining/P’geist + their restless native spirits, America failing to live up to Phil-a-delphic ideals) as well as his composed façade (once known as Stanley the Stutterer, his actorly front crumbling in face of truth + forging later respect again à la Crowe), later locked in cabinet w/ slave-ghost at affluent schoolmate’s birthday party (covering up nation’s shameful history w/ fake celebration); taken to hospital, doctor (w/d Shyamalan: self-effacement in order to gain truth) mistakenly insinuates mom as cause of wounds (Freudian mother-blaming, at which Crowe scoffs but film itself eventually reinforces), son's visitations by abused housewife + accidental-gunshot boy ("I’ll show you where my dad keeps his gun") resituating responsibility on absent/abusive fathers (Crowe's guilt over neglect of VG + ultimately Anna)…for now.

After confrontation in homemade sanctuary (à la church where 1st met Crowe) by pea-soup girl, travels w/ Crowe (cf similar Bruce Willis + "special" kid flick Mercury Rising + more recent The Kid) to her home to denounce mother’s role in her death (out of blue, only such scene of real-life bkgd to visitations shown [+ only one outside Cole/Malc’s POV]: father’s guilty in past/theory, mother in present/reality [indictment of Exorcist’s Chris McNeil + her (anti-Spiritual) atheism for daughter’s "sickness"]: on archetypal level, at least, nurturing agent [own "Look in my eyes" realist mother] instead harming anima [Crowe’s neglect, again, of own visionary Grey/Anna]) via girl’s videotape (preceded by puppet play: act dropping away to reveal truth, as soon happens for Crowe), leading to Sear getting lead in play over Tommy (acting, when it’s good, similarly "listening to the voices;" removing sword from stone achieving manhood thru offices of not-the-father Crowe after denouncing murderous [not-the-]mother boy’s demonization of own mom [who’s holding his phallus in vise] in order to enable separation, she aka Great Mother of unconscious + connection to spiritual world, applause child’s reintegration into the corporate ego), after which he advises Crowe father-to-the-man style on how to get thru to estranged wife: by talking to her in her sleep (reconnecting w/ anima in own unconscious).

At home, Crowe has "Owl Creek" revelation (viewer’s surprise realization that we, too, "ghost," having left own bodies for a while + similarly not "getting it") while wife watches wedding video (death a 2nd marriage, reuniting w/ "lost" spiritual aspect), à la girl’s incriminating tape (laying to rest reciprocal img of heroic male, Die Hard star turned spiritual-domestic w/ this + flop Story of Us), not negating fact that film’s lone real-life villain is female + two (conventional) heroes are, well, male.