This Movie Repeated The Sixth Sense's Twist Ending Two Years Later And Nobody Saw It Coming

By Faith Roswell

Published Dec 29, 2024

Followed

Thread 10

Custom image by Milica Djordjevic

Warning: this article contains a murder-suicide topic.

M. Night Shyamalan's plot twists have become an expected pattern in his movies, and The Sixth Sense made him a household name. However, despite being a more haunting movie, The Others has attracted less attention.

The Others has often been considered one of Nicole Kidman's best movies. Kidman plays Grace Stewart, who lives in a remote country house with her children, who are both sensitive to light. When three people arrive, all seeking employment, Grace hires them as house staff, but strange things soon begin to happen. As Grace's children are photosensitive and cannot tolerate direct sunlight, the family sees the darkness as their safe place, while the light is portrayed as dangerous. This is one of The Others' most interesting details, which is as memorable as its horrifying twist ending.

The Others Has The Same Plot Twist As The Sixth Sense

The Others' Twist Ending Turns The Entire Movie On Its Head

Nicole Kidman's character and her daughter in The Others

When Grace and her children make with the people she calls "the intruders," she discovers that they are living people holding a seance, trying to them. The ending of The Others shows that Grace and her children are all dead, with Grace smothering them both with a pillow before ending her own life. This is the same twist as The Sixth Sense, in which Bruce Willis's character realizes that he is dead, as the result of his troubled patient's murder-suicide. That said, while The Sixth Sense's twist effectively ends the movie, The Others' story has not yet finished.

The Others is a ghost story told from the ghosts' point of view. This unique twist turns the entire movie on its head by introducing the idea that the ghosts are actually being haunted by the living. This is especially clear in the terrifying seance scene, which shows a typical horror movie seance from a new perspective, forcing the audience to sympathize with the ghosts. Rewatching The Others even shows its most sinister characters in a more sympathetic light, with the spooky staff afraid to reveal their true nature to a character they know to be a murderer.

Why The Others' Horrifying Twist Works

Both The Sixth Sense And The Others Dropped Hints That Their Protagonists Were Dead

The housekeeper and groundskeeper in The Others

While The Sixth Sense and The Others have the same twist, it is unsurprising that audiences do not see it coming. The Sixth Sense tells a simple story, with the therapist helping the boy to accept his abilities. On the other hand, The Others is much more complicated. It features tropes from the best ghost story movies, and the many mysteries surrounding the house distract audiences from the truth. Even if viewers had guessed that the family had been murdered, Grace appeared to be the least likely person to commit the act, though The Others dropped regular hints.

The-Sixth-Sense-Haley-Joel-Osment-Bruce-Willis

12 Twists That Feel So Obvious When You Rewatch Those Movies

Movies with a twist can often provide a satisfying ending that creates more drama and excitement, but after the big reveal, it's hard to revisit.

Posts

The Others, like The Sixth Sense, hints as to the true nature of its main characters, but they are harder to spot among the other spooky moments. Bruce Willis' character cannot open a door in The Sixth Sense, while Grace discovers that she cannot leave the grounds of her house. The Sixth Sense hints that the therapist is dead by only showing Cole interacting with him, while The Others repeatedly references the way that the characters died. Grace, who shot herself in the head, suffers from migraines, while the children repeat "stop breathing" during a game.

The Premise For The Others Is One Of The Most Disturbing Horror Plots Of All Time

The Others' Ending Has A Final Terrifying Moment

On its surface, The Others is a classic gothic ghost story, with typical haunted house tropes. Grace is understandably terrified, and appears to want nothing more than to protect her children, so when it is revealed that this fragile and frightened protagonist is a family annihilator, it is a very disturbing moment. The premise for the movie was so unsettling that even Nicole Kidman briefly quit filming The Others, saying that it gave her nightmares. It is rare for a horror movie to feature parents murdering their children, and rarer still to set the person up as a sympathetic character.

The Sixth Sense vs The Others
Title	Year	Director	Rotten Tomatoes Critics Rating
The Sixth Sense	1999	M. Night Shyamalan	86%
The Others	2001	Alejandro Amenábar	84%

Grace is still a fragile and unpredictable character by the end of The Others, only just coming to with her new life. This is a completely different resolution to The Sixth Sense, which ends with the therapist finding peace and his spirit departing the earth in a flash of light. While the housekeeper tries to reassure Grace that most "intruders" are peaceful, Grace refuses to accept this, telling the children that "this house is ours." The ending implies that Grace will be a malevolent ghost, setting The Others up for an even more disturbing sequel.