I need to see The Others again, but I am a fan.
The Sixty Sense, not so much, because it only works because it’s a film and uses movie logic. You see, in a movie, when someone says "let's go to Reno!", you don’t get a five-hour road trip during which they stop and eat, use the toilet, or even stay overnight somewhere. You just get a cut to an establishing shot of Reno.
But in TSS, when Malcolm says he’ll see Cole at their next meeting, the next thing we see, for us, is their next meeting. BUT where the film dies in that this is ALSO what Malcolm experiences, because if he doesn’t seem to have that whole life going on between the scenes that we see him in.
So when he goes for the date with his wife, he gets back to find she’s gone to bed and he can’t get into the closet. But he doesn’t go upstairs and ask her WTF is going on, the film just cuts, and so does he, to the next scene. So in Malcolm's life, he doesn’t live those moments that occurs between scenes in a movie.
Obviously TSS only works on a first watch because we then know the twist. But for me it only just about worked on the first watch, because not only did I guess what was going on part-way through (and my wife guessed the moment Malcolm was shot!), but because as soon as it was finished it struck me at how dumb it was that Malcolm didn’t guess what had happened to him, since he didn’t experience anything between the scenes.
"I’ll see you next week", he says to Cole, but then he doesn’t actually live a week, he just turns up for that meeting. And how does he greet the Mom, or anyone else, especially his wife, and not think WTF is going on here? Why is everyone ignoring me? How can I go to a strange kid's wake and no-one look at me or ask who I am?
It only works because Malcolm only exists in movie logic. And that’s not actually a very robust way of structuring a massive twist. Yes, there’s the theory that he's in denial and that Cole is actually the one whose purpose is to help him get to that point where he can accept and realise his situation. But then, structurally, that doesn’t work either because he eventually works it out himself when he wife is asleep, which kind of blows that theory out of the water.
And then kind of proves that TSS is really just another twist that doesn’t actually work. The Others, on the other hand, although in basic terms only just kind of reverses the same concept, doesn’t follow the same logic, because events do continue to occur off camera, though we only see what we need to see. And in this case the film does reward on further viewings, as does Fight Club, because we can see things from the other perspective, knowing what we then know.
And letting Alfred senselessly grieve for him even though he’s not really dead, without so much as a letter telling Alfred what really happened. (Good thing they happened to run into each other.)
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