So as I've been waiting here for someone to pick some stuff up, I did a quick plot summary of the Sixth Sense through the lens of the journey out of Mormonism. I present the rough cut to you here, because it's stupid but was fun to write up... it needs a lot of editing and work, but at some point I want to clean it up, add pictures, and then post it. Once could even argue that M Night is a closeted exmo with as well as the movie fits.
Anyway... if you're inclined, I present to you the Sixth Sense, NOMed up:
As the Sixth Sense begins, Dr. Malcolm Crowe is receiving an award for his years of work helping those with doubts about the church. After he gets home, he is caught by surprise when one of the members he helped try to get past his doubts (Vincent) brings him all of the research he refused to discuss (CES Letter, Mormon Think, LDS Essays, etc). As Malcolm looks at the research and rebuttals to apologetic answers, he falls back on the bed in shock at the realization over problems with the church’s history and doctrines while his wife Anna runs over to comfort him.
We then fast forward months later to when Malcolm meets Cole, who is showing some of the same doubts that Vincent was troubled with, and Malcolm is even more driven to help Cole through them.
Since the time that Malcolm had processed all of the information about church history from Vincent, his wife Anna effectively shut him out of her life. Even some of the rooms in their house are now locked to Malcolm, which further drives him to help Cole avoid falling into the same trap that Vincent did.
As Malcolm continues to work with Cole, they begin to build up a level of trust and friendship. This leads to the most famous dialogue of the movie, translated for this exclusive Director’s Cut:
COLE: I see people who have lost their testimony of the church, but they don't know they’ve lost it yet.
MALCOLM: People who have lost their testimonies? Like anti-Mormon apostates?
COLE: They’re walking around like active church members. They don’t see each other or know there are so many like them. When they’re confronted with evidence against the church’s truth claims, they only see what they want to see.
MALCOLM: How often do you see them?
COLE: All the time. They’re everywhere.
Malcolm believes he can help Cole stay strong, but as he reviews his sessions with Vincent, he begins to pick up on things he never noticed before. Malcolm hears Vincent ask how the Book of Mormon can have both a tight and loose translation, or why the Book of Abraham doesn’t match the papyrus that Joseph Smith copied the symbols from.
As Malcolm turns the audio up louder, he hears Vincent explaining to someone else in the room how the lost scroll theory has already been disproven and that the problems with polygamy go well beyond the text of D&C 132 itself.
As Malcolm listens, he realizes that Vincent was also seeing people who had lost their testimonies, and that the voice on the recording is another member trying to find answers to church problems that have caused him pain. This leads Malcolm to believe that Cole is truly seeing people who have lost their testimony of the church.
Malcolm then tells Cole that if he can help these people with their unresolved cognitive dissonance, he will also help himself. Because of their friendship, Cole trusts Malcolm’s plan and works up the courage to talk to a teenage girl named Kyra who had recently been sent the CES Letter.
Kyra asks Cole to attend her meeting with her parents and ward leadership to talk about her issues with church history, and at the meeting Kyra is told that what she has read is just anti-Mormon lies and that research is not the answer to these glaring problems.
Cole helps Kyra to discuss why the apologetic answers about DNA and the Lamanites or why the temple ceremony matches the Masonic ceremony (that Joseph Smith learned just weeks prior) do not hold up to scrutiny.
Because of Cole’s help, Kyra is able to find her peace outside of the church, and Cole discovered that he can help these people without needing to be afraid. After these encounters, Cole begins to live a happier life without fear, and Malcolm is happy that he has helped Cole in a way that he couldn’t help Vincent.
That Sunday, Cole and his mother are headed to church and notice more open spots in the parking lot than in years past. Cole tells his mom that the reason is because there are so many people losing their testimony after reading about church historical and doctrinal problems, and his mom refuses to believe him.
Cole then tells his mom Lynn how one of their ancestors was a first wife to a Mormon under Brigham Young, and that after her husband married many other women, she proactively lived a loveless marriage, practically raising their kids by herself. He described how this ancestor barely ever saw her husband again, and that his second polygamous wife was the one taken out of town during their journeys. He then explained to his mom that this is still the eternal law of the afterlife, and that Mormon women will spend their eternity with husbands instructed to take polygamous wives to produce spirit children to populate new planets.
Lynn becomes angry with Cole for bringing up such a horrible thought, and yells at him for insulting the memories of those before them and twisting church doctrine. Cole then discusses how their ancestors didn’t do anything wrong because they didn’t have all of the information about the church that we do today, and that his ancestors were just doing the best they could.
As Cole tells his mom more stories about the pain caused by polygamy and the many ways that Joseph Smith abused the practice, Lynn begins to tear up. She realizes that the apologetic arguments about polygamy she was told were not true, and that it’s OK to both have love for their ancestors while being able to accept the truth in this life about the church. They hug in the car, and Cole finally finds peace with the information he has learned about the church.
The final scene of the movie finds Malcolm returning home to see Anna. Taking Cole’s advice, Malcolm talks to Anna while she is asleep on the couch. Anna whispers in her sleep to ask Malcolm why he lost his testimony, and Malcolm’s temple recommend falls out of her hand.
As the recommend falls to the ground, Malcolm realized that his testimony didn’t survive that night with Vincent. He now realizes that he is one of the lost testimonies himself, and everything flashes in front of him, making perfect sense for the first time: Why the Book of Abraham translation is wrong and apologetics can’t answer for it, why DNA shows the Native Americans weren’t Lamanites from Israel as Joseph claimed God told him in revelation, how the Book of Mormon uses Deutero-Isaiah passages written after Lehi left for Israel, why the Book of Mormon translation never used gold plates but a stone in a hat, how Joseph Smith used revelation to manipulate people to do the tasks he wanted them to do, how Joseph Smith had been telling stories from the Book of Mormon with perfect detail before even claiming the plates, and so many more issues that had long troubled him.
Upon realizing that he no longer can hold a testimony of the church’s truth claims, Malcolm comes to peace with the fact that he is no longer a part of the church. He moves on from his old beliefs in the church and steps out into the bright world outside, anxious to discover all of the wonders that he never could appreciate while a member of the church.
(It's stupid, I know... but it was a cathartic few minutes typing it up
)
