Family Drama and Thriller

The Sixth Sense is billed as—and is—a thriller. The film begins with Malcolm's creeptastic former patient breaking in and shooting Malcolm and himself, and then we meet a boy who sees dead people on the regular. There are ghosts running around the film's world (including the main character, as it turns out), and there are lots of suspenseful moments as ghosts scare the pants off of Cole while trying to communicate with him. So, we think this flick definitely counts as thriller fodder.

That all said and acknowledged, though, The Sixth Sense spends a lot of time on family dynamics. Malcolm's and Cole's struggles with the supernatural world create a lot of problems for them at home, and the huge "A-ha!" moments in the film come when they figure out how to solve those issues. The central message of the film seems to be that, living or dead, you really can't escape your family drama. Resolving it is the only way to move on. So the family plot is actually just as important as the scary stuff. It has as much an emotional hold on the viewer as the supernatural plot line.