James Newton Howard

There's a reason James Newton Howard has worked on a lot Shyamalan films: he's a genius at playing up the scare factor in any given scene. The soundtrack for The Sixth Sense is understated overall, with just some low instrumentals playing in the background much of the time, but the score definitely maintains enough low-level spookiness that you think things could go south at any time.

During dramatic moments, the music becomes much more prominent. For example, when Cole sees people hanging in the halls of the school, the music includes some pretty freaky (and grating, if we're being honest) strings. The sounds mirror the kind of jarring, nasty experience that Cole is having.

Of course, sometimes silence is the most powerful weapon in Shyamalan's arsenal, as when the thermostat suddenly plunges as Cole visits the bathroom in the middle of the night. As the temperature drops, there's absolutely no sound—just the visual of the thermostat needle going from right to left. We know that this means ghosts are around, and the complete silence makes the moment even more unsettling.

So, bottom line: the soundtrack doesn't have a thundering, overwhelming presence (in contrast, say, to Howard's work on the Christopher Nolan Batman movies), but the scoring and sound choices amp up the whole suspense factor by a ton.