At the big reveal. Just watched recently and noticed a couple misdirections. During the scene with Malcolm and Cole’s mom, she tells Cole ‘you have an hour.’ Meaning dinner will be ready in an hour. This is easily interpreted as her telling Malcolm that he has an hour.
“Happy Anniversary” 'nuff said.
Cole’s “I see dead people” of course.
Door to cellar is locked. He searches pants for key. Next scene, he’s in the cellar.
Anybody got anymore?
Missed edit window. Totally missed this one.
A little more explanation for “I see dead people” from my last post. Why would you tell this to another dead person?
There’s also a scene (it may even be the same scene, I can’t remember) where Malcolm says he will guess what Cole is thinking. He says something like “Your mother saw a therapist after she got divorced, but it didn’t seem to help her. She told you a therapist is someone you can tell your secrets to, but you don’t want anyone to know your secret.” Cole agrees with all this, which confirms Malcolm’s assumption that he has reservations about therapists. He doesn’t realize that, while all this is true, there’s another reason why Cole is frightened of him.
Because Malcolm doesn’t know he’s a dead person? Cole knows a lot more about ghosts than Malcolm does, and explains in the very same conversation that they don’t know they’re ghosts, aren’t aware of other ghosts, and “only see what they want to see”. Malcolm has also spent enough time trying to figure out Cole’s problem that Cole must realize he has no idea that Cole can see ghosts.
The bigger question is why Cole never just says “Hey, sorry to be the one to have to tell you this, but you’re a ghost.” But he is frightened of ghosts and doesn’t want to make them angry. Once he comes to know and like Malcolm he probably doesn’t want to hurt his feelings. Since the ghosts apparently block out a lot of things, we could speculate that telling them they’re ghosts wouldn’t even work – they might just blank it out.
If that’s what she really said, I think she’s whooshing the interviewer/his readers.
Well, I was of course throwing in the femme/butch part for the hilarity.
But even leaving aside the specifics – indeed, even leaving aside whether the beautiful tale in question gets slain by the ugly fact of whether she ever gave such an interview – it’s a perfect visual: a writer who insists X is false because character Y was based on person Z, without knowing if Z is A and B and a whole lotta C.
Plus, he’s what, six? No one has all the answers at six. He’s a very scared little boy who sees dead people, and they are scary as hell, and he doesn’t realize yet thaat he can help them. His mom doesn’t really believe him at this point, and she’s stressed and tired too, and he doesn’t have a place to turn.
Malcolm becomes his friend…and like Lamia says, he doesn’t want to hurt his feelings.
I’m not entirely sure Cole knew Malcolm was a ghost at that point; maybe he knew right from the start, but maybe it was later – and if so, how much later?
It might have been later. Malcom’s wound is not readily apparent.
When some jerk on the choir bus from Indianapolis to St. Louis shouted out, just as we were loading the tape into the player:
"HE’S DEAD!"
That asshole.
Didn’t anyone think the whole movie was a flashback at the moment death, similar to Carlito’s Way?
Exactly the same for me. I’m still not sure how people get past that whole scene without figuring it out.
As discussed, there are a few misdirections before that though. And note that we see Crowe and Cole interacting long before the “I see dead people” bit. We’ve had lots of time to just get used to him as a normal character, and to forget about the shooting scene at the start.
But note: I’m not saying anyone should, or should not, have got the twist at any particular time.
I just responding to the thing you’re not sure about: why many didn’t get the twist that early.
Beyond that, prior to The Sixth Sense I don’t think there were many well-known movies with the “dead all along” twist ending. It seems cliched now, but I think that’s in large part due to the success of The Sixth Sense. Looking at the TVTropes entry, there have been several post-Sixth Sense movies where the protagonist turned out to be a ghost, but in most (although not all) of the earlier movies listed then either the protagonist is revealed to be a ghost pretty early on (e.g. Beetlejuice) or the character revealed to be a ghost in the end isn’t the protagonist. (The latter is also a fairly common trope in folklore.) Many people who saw The Sixth Sense had probably never seen a movie with this particular twist before; I’m pretty sure I hadn’t.
The unreliable narrator is of course a very well established trope, but the more common (and thus easier to predict) twist endings are that the narrator is either lying or insane.
I think Jacob’s Ladder, which was released in 1990, probably had a substantial influence on The Sixth Sense.
Note that Bruce Willis realizing he’s dead is not the same as the audience finding out he’s dead. It clearly is supposed to be a surprise to him. To us, not so much.
For the record, here’s the hospital exchange (from IMDb):
"Cole Sear: I see dead people.
Malcolm Crowe: In your dreams?
[Cole shakes his head no]
Malcolm Crowe: While you’re awake?
[Cole nods]
Malcolm Crowe: Dead people like, in graves? In coffins?
Cole Sear: Walking around like regular people. They don’t see each other. They only see what they want to see. They don’t know they’re dead.
Malcolm Crowe: How often do you see them?
Cole Sear: All the time. They’re everywhere."
Did we need read lights flashing? Sirens? Someone holding up a big sign that says “Mr. Exposition mode engaged.”?
When somebody explains The Rules, you know that The Rules are a key plot point. Just the “They don’t know they’re dead.” line alone tells you that someone important in the movie is dead and doesn’t know it. None of the other dead people the kid interacts with are important enough that it would be this important to the plot.
Not until the very end, but I was 9 or 10 at the time. I was shocked by it and even rewatching the film now I think it was really masterfully done. Perfect use of what amounts to an unreliable narrator without it seeming like we’re being cheated. Great movie.
I remember a poster who mentioned once that s/he had a dog as a child who really went to a farm catering for old pets…until some posts later it suddenly downed on him/her that s/he had zero reason to believe the pet actually went to such a farm.
People can sometimes be blind to the obvious, I don’t see why Agatha Christie would be immune to this. Especially given the era when she lived.
ftg I don’t know what you’re trying to prove at this point. That everyone else is stupid and you’re great?
The vast majority of people responding to the poll didn’t see the twist until the end. Even those people who got the twist earlier have acknowledged that the film probably intends you to realize only at the end.
If you’re supposed to get it earlier, why no smoking gun until the end?
I mean, if the audience already knows, we may as well flash back to the conclusion of the original shooting, and have done with it. Why doesn’t this happen until the end?
Also, on the subject of misdirection, I just thought of another one: Crowe interacts with plenty of objects throughout the film e.g. the tape player. Whether ghosts can routinely move objects without difficulty is not mentioned in the rules, but intuitively we’d assume not because otherwise it would be trivial for ghosts to be detected by the human world.
In fairness, there’s that gasp-inducing bit early on where the little kid’s mom leaves the kitchen, comes back, and – well, there’s Sonny Boy still innocuously eating breakfast, except all the cupboards and drawers are now open! AAAAH! (Also, isn’t that sorta the whole point of those disturbing scratches on Cole’s arm?)
That’s how it went for me, too. My husband figured it out much sooner, but he had the grace to keep it to himself.
I was kind of pissed off with the twist - I had been playing along with the movie fantasy “rules” as have been established in our society up to this point, then he went and messed with them! I’ll admit, though, that part of my irritation was that I was successfully manipulated. 
My husband has also studied film, and I think that might be why he always gets the twists before I do.