The Sixth Sense
To paraphrase another great <PERSON> movie, a movie never changes. It just seems different because you’re different. The Sixth Sense lives in a weird fixed point of pop culture history. It was everywhere, obviously a major box office success but endlessly parodied and dissected and referenced for years and years and years casting a major pall on <PERSON> as the twist ending guy. 952
It's not fair to devolve this movie down to its very well executed twist. It's just a well executed movie on every level and the twist is what people came away talking about (except me, I had the twist ruined for me in 1999 and the part that upset me most was a mother willingly poisoning her child, a banal and terrible evil that my 14 year old mind had never even considered a possibility before this movie).
Today I came away from The Sixth Sense really impressed by all the craft on display, especially <PERSON>. You can count the amount of truly great child actors on at most two hands and he is on the list. But <PERSON> himself really just stepped up to the plate in his late twenties and smacked out a home run. You can debate whether or not he ever did it again (he didn't) but find one other writer director who came out swinging so hard so shortly after becoming of rental car age. 292