The Sixth Sense
The Sixth Sense, directed by the famous horror/thriller director M. Knight Shyamalan, follows the journey of a distinguished phycologist, Dr. Malcom Crowe, and his interactions with his patient, Cole Sear. This film is famous for blurring the lines between the living and the dead along with reality and unreality. In the middle of the film, we discover that Cole has a sixth sense, where he can see dead people.
Throughout the film Cole interacts with his phycologist and the audience assumes that he is alive and simply doing his job, however, in the final moments of the film we discover, along with Dr. Crowe, that Dr. Crowe has actually been dead all along and was simply one of the dead people that Cole was seeing and helping. In this analysis of The Sixth Sense, I will explore one of the main characteristics of post-modern horror and it manifests in the film to blur the lines between the living and the dead and how it reflects on mental health.
Transgression of Boundaries in The Sixth Sense
In The Sixth Sense, the lines between who is real and who is dead are blurred throughout the movie. Throughout the movie, the audience believes that the director has made it clear and obvious about who is real and who is dead. At the end of the film the audience questions everything that they have seen when they find out that Dr. Crowe was actually dead during the entire narrative, even though he looked alive and well, just like Cole and Dr. Crow’s wife who are still living. This film is a great example of the postmodern element of horror, a transgression and violation of boundaries, because there is a complete violation of the boundaries between the living and the dead. In Isabel Pinedo’s article, Recreational Terror: Postmodern elements of the Contemporary Horror Film, she describes how the transgressions of boundaries is an essential element in postmodern horror. She explains how “the post paradigm blurs the boundaries between… normal and abnormal, and the outcome of the struggle is at best ambiguous” (Pinedo 22). In The Sixth Sense, this element is manifested through Shyamalan’s muddled and indistinct portrayal of the living versus the dead.
This transgression instills fear and horror on the audience throughout the film because of Cole’s interaction with the dead/ghosts. For example, when Cole is going to the bathroom in the middle of the night, he stumbles upon a dead woman in his house who died from suicide, cutting her wrists specifically. In this scene we specifically see the living Cole with the dead women who is haunting his living life. This lack of separation of the dead and the living is a great example of the blurring paradigm that Pinedo explains in her article. A narrative is created where both Cole and the audience become fearful when the dead crosses over and interacts with the living/Cole.
Another example that represents a transgression of boundaries is when we witness Cole’s interaction with the young dead girl in his house one night. We see her physically get sick through the process of vomiting the organic matter that we shed in the process of living. This violation of the interior and exterior along with the crossover of living traits to the dead, also blurs the lines between the living and the dead.
Reflection on Mental Health in The Sixth Sense
It is notable that the transgression of boundaries also reflects on Cole’s mental health. Many of his classmates call him a freak and everyone, including his teacher and mother, think that something is mentally wrong with him. The movie portrays what is occurring in Cole’s head in a negative light through the way that others treat him. In John Goodwin’s article, The Horror of Stigma: Psychosis and Mental Health Care Environments in Twenty-First-Century Horror Film (Part II), he reveals that 18.18% of psychosis-related films feature clients that who were telling the truth. This statistic is important because it discredits those with a mental illness and takes away their credibility. While it is debatable that Cole has a mental illness (mainly because seeing dead people does not fit in a specific category), other characters treat his behavior as a mental illness and their actions toward him reflects negatively on his mental health.
M. Knight Shyamalan’s depiction of Cole’s mental illness is concerning throughout the film. He portrays Cole’s peers negatively reacting to him being different and having a mental illness, which illuminates the tone and the lens towards mental illness in this film. Goodwin explains that this is important to recognize because it is common for people to refuse treatment of mental disorders because of the negative stigma created in horror films (Goodwin 230)
Shutter Island
In the film Shutter Island, Martin Scorsese takes the audience on the journey of a federal agent, Teddy Daniels, and his partner auditing a Mental Health Care Facility (MHCF) on an isolated island, referred to as “Shutter Island”. Throughout the movie, the audience receives snippets into Teddy’s past through several flashbacks or hallucinations that make the viewers question his personal narrative and story. It is not until the end of the film that we completely realize that Teddy is actually Andrew Laeddis, a patient at the MHCF. In this analysis of Shutter Island, I will also explore how a transgression of boundaries manifests in the film. Additionally, I will analyze the way that he depicts mental health and how it reflects on how the public views and treats people with mental health.
Transgression of Boundaries in Shutter Island
There is a transgression of boundaries between the living and the dead in Shutter Island, mainly through Teddy’s hallucinations throughout the film where he interacts with his dead wife and three dead children. While Scorsese does indicate when a hallucination is occurring mainly through the use of lighting, there is still a lack of separation between the dead and the living as we see Teddy’s dead wife, interacting with him on Shutter Island and in other scenes from his past.
Pinedo would describe Scorsese’s tactic of the surprise ending in Shutter Island as “nothing is what it seems to be in postmodern horror… it operates on the principle of undecidability” (Pinedo 22). The audience discovers that Teddy is not who he says he is because of his multiple personalities’ mental illness. He has created the identity of Teddy Daniels to cope with the pain associated with remembering that he murdered his wife who murdered his children. This tactic transgresses boundaries because in the last moments of the film, the viewer finds his or herself questioning everything that he/she was told during the film.
Goodwin’s article also highlights that horror films use a specific geographical frame/boundary to prevent the mental health patient from returning to normality (Goodwin 227). This transgresses the boundary of the mental health patient because even if the patient does show signs of improvement, there is a physical barrier that prevents them from leaving, and in this example it’s miles and miles of ocean. The poster of the film even says “some places never let you go” which reinforces the geographical limitations on the patients and the characters of the film.
Reflection on Mental Health in Shutter Island
The theme of Mental Health in Shutter Island is prevalent and noticeable throughout the entire film. Similar to the depiction of mental illness in The Sixth Sense, Scorsese also frames mental illness in a negative light which ultimately stigmatizes mentally ill patients as problematic, dangerous, violent, and incapable of contributing to society. In Shutter Island, the setting itself stigmatizes mentally ill patients by exiling them on an isolated island where the most ill are kept essentially in cages as if they are wild animals that cannot control themselves.
The portrayal of these patients in cages as animals that cannot control their actions, discredits and creates a false representation for people who are actually mentally ill in real life. This film will ultimately deter them from getting help because they do not want to end up locked away on an isolated island with animalistic treatment. As Goodwin recognizes, film is an influential form of media, therefore, when a film misrepresents the field of mental health, it is essentially creating a negative stigmatized belief of the mentally ill (Goodwin 230).
Comparison of The Sixth Sense and Shutter Island
Similarities and Differences of Boundary Transgression
As I have explained in the context of both films, they both use the post-modern element of a transgression of boundaries to instill horror and fear between the living and the dead. Additionally, both films transgress the boundaries between what is real and what is unreal. One flashing similarity is that they both have surprise endings that make the audience reconsider and rethink everything that they have spent the past two plus hours believing and accepting. After watching both films once and then re-watching them knowing what the ending will be, the film is completely reframed, and the ending does not come as a surprise as it is easier to notice and recognize the subtle clues that were hidden underneath what we believed to be real. This tactic of blurring what is real and what is not real manifests horror in both films in a very similar light that makes the audience self-reflect to the point where they are questioning if they are living amongst the dead and are not event aware of it, just like the characters in both films.
Both films transgress the boundaries between not only reality and unreality, but also between the living and the dead, however, the way they do so differs. In The Sixth Sense, the living and the dead are interacting in every scene even though the audience is not aware of that until the end of the film. They essentially interact in the same world with no barriers between them as we see Cole and his psychiatrist interact. In Shutter Island, there is still a blurred boundary between life and death, however, it is easier for the audience to recognize it due to the directors use of lighting. For example, Teddy Daniel’s Hallucinations where he interacts with his dead wife and children, are well lit and brighter than the dark and stormy island where there are only those that are alive. I think the light hallucinations represent the common theme of “stepping into the light” that directors commonly use to represent someone dying or entering into the afterlife.
Similarities and Differences of Depiction of Mental Health
Both films also address mental health issues through the way that they depict the characters that have mental “illnesses.” I also noticed that they both depict the mentally ill as ostracized, violent, temperamental, and disruptive to society. This negative portrayal affects both mentally ill people but also how society is going to treat them. This situation is problematic and should be addressed by leaders of the horror industry along with leaders in psychiatric care.
It is important to recognize the time gap between the two films, which makes them distinctly different in content and in context. The Sixth Sense, released in 1999, addresses mental health in a subtle and discrete manner without explicitly talking about Cole’s mental illness in every scene. Shutter Island, released in 2010, approaches mental health in an upfront and invasive way, where mental health drives the whole narrative. In Shutter Island, the audience also witnesses mental health impact and affect the characters physically through the way they behave and how they are treated on the island by the staff. The 11-year gap between the two films is partially responsible for this difference. Our society is constantly shifting how mental health and even recently celebrities and public figures have spoken about how mental illness has impacted their lives. Therefore, since Shutter Island was released later, it would make sense why they are more open and upfront with the way they approach and discuss mental illnesses. If we have seen this big of a difference in just eleven year, I wonder how the film industry will change in their approach to addressing mental health and illness.
Works Cited
Goodwin, John. “The Horror of Stigma: Psychosis and Mental Health Care Environments in Twenty-First-Century Horror Film (Part II).” Perspectives in Psychiatric Care, 2013, pp. 224–34.
Pinedo, Isabel. “Recreational Terror: Postmodern Elements of the Contemporary Horror Film.” Journal of Film and Video, vol. 48, Spring/Summer 1996, pp. 17–31.
qu0tes. I See Dead People Quote from The Sixth Sense. 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YppxEYkqTU.
Scorsese, Martin. Shutter Island. 2010.
“Shutter Island.” FILM ART Dreams – a Series of Thoughts, Images or Sensations Which Occurs in a Person’s Mind during Sleep., 16 Mar. 2016, https://dreamdocumentaryas.wordpress.com/2016/03/06/shutter-island/.
Shyamalan, M.Knight. The Sixth Sense. 1999.