I’m still struggling to forgive Mischa Fucking Barton.

Sorry. I should explain.

The O.C. star has done nothing to me personally. She’s swell, and I’ve enjoyed her work (really!). Plus, I'm sure she couldn't give two solitary shits about me - a gay, anxious Jew who writes about horror movies for funsies. But she gave me quite a few reasons to be anxious back in my younger days.

These days, my overeager anxiety finds normal, adult things to fixate on, like money, or whether or not all my friends secretly hate me, or the difference between maroon and burgundy. (Totally normal things!)

But seven-year-old Josh liked to fixate (while simultaneously hating himself for fixating) upon supernatural spookies. The curled snarl of Linda Blair’s soup-eating grin in The Exorcist. The rubbery O-mouth of Ghostface as he slices up thirtysomething teens in Scream. And especially, ESPECIALLY, the spookies from The Sixth Sense, in which Mischa Fucking Barton apparates onscreen to puke her guts out onto poor Haley Joel Osment’s feet.

I put myself through quite a lot because of my crippling fixations on select horrors. Which is why it sometimes befuddles me that Horror is now my obsession.

And, although the mountainous struggle of the 1999 film loomed large in my memory, I knew I could now conquer the weathered peak of Mt. Night Shyamalan, any time I wanted.

Still.

Despite my enjoyment of all things cinematic and spooky, I did not want to revisit this particularly traumatizing tale, despite knowing full well that I can now handle it as an adult. I know how to handle my anxiety (most days). I know how to compartmentalize my horror media consumption. And I KNOW that Mischa Fucking Barton is chilling on her sunroof somewhere in Calabasas, her skin amazingly clear, living her best life. I know this, if nothing else.

This changed when decided to revisit what I dubbed, the Movies that ‘Gay’d’ me. I knew this would have to be the first one. The catch was: I had never actually WATCHED the full movie.

So I did. Start to finish.

Now, I realize I was scared for all the wrong reasons.

Watching the Scary Shit from my childhood was surprisingly easy. It was seeing everything else that was hard.

What had triggered me into so much fear in my childhood (the bloody bodies, angry ghosts), now induced giggles and wonderment. Whereas, I found the scenes that overanxious Baby Gay Josh didn't remember (the scenes of struggle and childhood trauma), triggered me more than Mischa Fucking Barton.

No. It wasn’t Mischa Fucking Barton I was scared of now.

It was Haley Fucking Joel Fucking Osment.

Because Haley Fucking Joel Fucking Osment reminded me an awful lot of a real boy around the same age, experiencing a mess of emotions he could not control. A boy who was buried under ‘80s slasher stats and memorized Broadway lyrics.

This movie made me see my own fucking ghost. Not cool, movie!

The story of a boy plagued by ghostly visions only he can see (relatable), Sixth Sense focuses on nine year old Cole Sear (Haley F’n Joel F’n Osment), raised by fiercely devoted single mom Lynn (Toni Collette, undersung legend), and the psychologist Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis, genuinely giving one of his best dramatic roles). Crowe himself is traumatized by an identically-tormented child he failed to help. Also, Bruce Willis was dead the whole time!

…Sorry, I just needed to rip that band-aid off.

The connective tissue of any good haunting film is defining how the supernatural world, the ghosts, interacts with the natural one, the very-alive-and-wish-to-stay-that-way-thank-you-very-muches. (Let’s call them normies). Shyamalan, for all the retrospective meme-bashing he endures from his subsequent career, is a genius of misdirection, both visual and narrative. He struck gold, simply put, by creating a film that begs repeat viewings. Knowing from the jump that YOU-KNOW-WHO was YOU-KNOW-WHAT the WHOLE TIME certainly dampens the film’s punch, but it also initiates a new adventure.

The twist is now the least engaging part of the film, but the knowledge of it creates in the viewer a sense of investigation. It invites us to put on our best leather jacket, channel our inner Olivia Benson, and become cinematic armchair detectives, dissecting each cinematic beat, and offering the hottest of takes and levels of inventive interpretation that echo discussions of Kubrick, Lynch, and Tarantino.

It is unfortunate then, that Shyamalan was doomed to fail by the armchair detectives and critics alike. It seems we placed a much-too-heavy crown on his head by hastily dubbing him Master of the Twist. It became his trademark after one movie and set him up for immediate failure.

Two decades later, a string of critical and commercial disappointments plague him, as they have plagued all great directors, but this pigeonholing seems comparatively imbalanced. When we bring up Kubrick, Lynch, and Tarantino, discussions rarely begin with “Ah yes, the great purveyors of films like ‘Killer’s Kiss,’ ‘The Straight Story,’ and the weaker half of ‘Grindhouse!’"

However, there is so often the immediate key change following the singing of Shyamalan’s praises to the tune of “'The Sixth Sense' was great, but…THE HAPPENING.”

Yeah, my dude. We all remember The Happening.

Also, the next person to make a lazy quip about pronouncing his name gets curry powder in their shampoo. Learn people’s names, Chad.

Admittedly, there are select Shyamalan features that deserve a second chance (The Village, The Visit), and there are some that do not. Suffice it to say, the man has been parodied and self-parodied to the point that the greatest twist in his next film would be to have no twist ending at all. Just have Samuel L. Jackson break the fourth wall and tell the audience to literally go fuck themselves. Roll credits.

However, when I watched his 1999 mega-hit all the way through for the first time (while also anticipating every traumatic jump scare), I found myself on this surreal axis where the traumatic effects were inexplicably reversed. It was odd, at first, but slowly, it began to make sense.

It wasn’t the Scary Shit that was getting to me, it was the Real Shit:

The scenes of Cole’s emotional struggle became the triggers I feared, as they eerily echoed the real life struggles I remembered (albeit with a resolution that was similar, minus the slew of undead hangers-on).

While the film doesn’t have any explicitly queer characters, The Sixth Sense is about a child being othered, and that’s an all too familiar feeling for many queer folks. Since this is the case with so many of my beloved scare flicks, I normally keep a mental checklist of the most queer-coded moments of any horror for later discussion. And there was no shortage of those moments, even in the first ten minutes: The rustic wine cellar in Malcolm’s house (who conducts psychiatric research surrounded by dust and chardonnay?), and skinny twunk Donnie Wahlberg with nipple ring on display (Donnie > Marky, come at me). But my organized mental list evaporated when Wahlberg, as unstable former patient, Vincent Grey, spoke a line that pierced with an uncanny accuracy:

“Do you know why you’re afraid when you’re alone?”

In my childhood disrupted, this was a question asked frequently of me, for which, agonizingly, I had no answer. I simply could not explain my irrational, obsessive fears. They simply were. But Grey continued:“I do.”

It killed me hearing that. If only Real Shit had as simple an answer as Scary Shit. But I wasn’t seeing ghosts anywhere but inside my own head. I couldn’t materialize my anxieties so simply.

One attempt to explore my irrational behavior was exposure therapy, in which the specific fear is brought before you in a controlled environment under supervision. I would sit in my therapist’s office, pop the Sixth Sense into a portable DVD player, and tried (failed, mostly) not to freak out.

(This means that I, an irrational yet clearly traumatized child sat with my pediatric psychologist as we watched clips from a movie about an irrational yet clearly traumatized child and a pediatric psychologist. I don’t think that qualifies as “irony,” but it’s stupid enough to be worth mentioning.)

My therapist was not cold, nor was she particularly friendly. She was treating me as part of a study at the National Institute of Mental Health on early adolescent anxiety and depression. The most I can recall from our sessions (other than those fucking ghosts), was the sheer size and insistence of her turquoise jewelry. I had been taught to see women who wore large and gaudy jewelry as clownish, but now that I’ve embraced my gay gremlin self, I can appreciate a bad bitch who knows her style and wears whatever the fuck she wants.

In any case, our CBT sessions were not particularly elucidating. But did the exposure therapy work?

The short answer is FUCK no. I spent the evenings following these sessions sleepless, sobbing and unable to stop Mischa Fucking Barton and the Scary Shits from invading my brain. On some occasions the panic attacks were so severe they induced vomiting (explained as a psychosomatic response to seeing the undead Kyra - Mischa F’n Barton - do the same thing on screen).

The long answer is…maybe? Obviously I started to watch more and more horror, devouring it with increasing quantity and inquisitiveness. The fear somehow transposed itself into thrill, aided by a knowledge of movie magic tricks and the growing immunity of age.

Perhaps the exposure therapy worked, but took these twenty years to take full effect.

I was always a bit slow on the uptake.

Regardless, if you have spent more than ten minutes with me, you know I like scary movies with a concerning passion. So something eventually switched, and I happen to be very grateful for whatever that thing is.

But there was still Haley Fucking Joel Fucking Osment.

In what is honestly an incredible performance, Osment continued to strike uncomfortably familiar chords as Cole Sear, Child in Trouble. But his first major scene with Willis’s Dr. Crowe, set in a church, ended with me giggling out loud:“Did this bitch just steal the Virgin Mary?”

Gently but intrusively confronted by Malcolm, Cole realizes church is not the haven he sought. That doesn’t stop him from boosting a piece of holy iconography for later protection. There were many moments of “did this bitch just?...” in this film that made me recognize the histrionics of my younger self, as well as the darker parts.

“Did this bitch just open every damn drawer in the house…for drama?”

“Did this bitch just turn the TV off by throwing a shoe?”

“Did this bitch just correct his own teacher in history class?”

(This one was deserved; his teacher was a kind of a prick.)

I’ve definitely done at least two of these things.

An immediate gut reaction to this church conversation, however, is one of danger. Regardless of Malcolm’s later heroism, the fact that he cornered an isolated young boy in a church pew had an innate malevolence about it. By 1999, most viewers instinctively knew that young boys seeking protection in church were vulnerable to its authority figures. This, even though the bombshell Boston Globe report on church sex abuse was still three years away. It foreshadows the revelation that, as a member of the undead, Crowe is part and parcel of Cole’s trauma, not the antidote to it.

The scene is also the first in a series that establish the many places Cole is NOT safe:

The school: where he is bullied by classmates and misunderstood by teachers (also the ghosts of executed peasants).

The hospital: where Dr. Shyamalan (M. Night making his obligatory Hitchcockian cameo) hastily diagnoses something called “school age schizophrenia,” and where the famous revelation “I see dead people” is finally uttered.

Even in his own home Cole is besieged. He heartbreakingly avoids talking to his mother (“She doesn’t look at me like everyone else…I don’t want her to...”) and is disturbed by all manner of ghouls such as (and I might have mentioned this before):

MISCHA.

FUCKING.

BARTON.

However, it was somewhat exhausting to experience. Feeling unsafe in places that purportedly exist to protect you is something that marginalized folks know well. Queer people are still being disowned by their families. Trans people find themselves treated as abnormal in the very medical centers that ostensibly provide their care. Immigrants and Americans of color alike are hyper vigilant of a law enforcement system that, despite employing and training members of marginalized communities, proves time and again to be a system built on xenophobic and racist templates.

And children of all identities, who spend an awful lot of time in the classroom, are woefully underprotected in school, as we too well know.

Was this why I felt more fear watching this child struggle with real demons? Bullies, loneliness, helplessness? Was I just projecting my gay and anxious self onto the narrative?

Yes. Yes I was.

But it’s one of the great things about horror for me: it wraps heartbreak and grief in entertaining twists, campy fun, and thrilling scares. That I can now be entertained by these things is a luxury I only wish I had when I was that scared child.

Yet, when you constantly have to wrestle with the discomfort of feeling othered, you may discover how to confront that discomfort in a way that is beneficial, or at least though-provoking and entertaining. One of the ways in which horror is able to dissect trauma is by suggesting it with a spooky metaphor rather than confronting the viewer with it head on. Scary Shit is meant to represent the parts of ourselves we avoid out of fear or sadness, yet allow us to access them more easily.

Which might explain why my gradual exposure, when controlled and honest, turned Scary Shit into a Fun Spooky Time, and Real Shit into...well, Real Shit is ever-present. But perhaps, if you can fit enough Fun Spooky Time into your life, the “other” in you will survive long enough to become your greatest asset: your unapologetic true self. It seems to be working for me at least.

And while some may be afraid of that truth, the longer it survives the stronger it becomes. Like a spooky ghost, people will misunderstand you, but god-willing another spooky kid will come along who likes - thrives, even - on understanding your spookiness. They will see right through you, but they will still see you. (Sorry, I had to work that line in somewhere. I am but an elder millennial and shitty puns are another fun curse we must endure.)

Something else that might have aided in my present perspective was simply understanding the through-line of the plot. One of the few things that actually helped me overcome some of my childhood fears of this film was when my father, who had no idea how helpful he was about to be, told me the ending of the movie.

Yep. A spoiler might have saved me.

He said that the ghosts were misunderstood, and that when Cole finally realized that the ghosts simply needed to communicate something, that they had unfinished business that kept them tethered to the world of the living, he started to flourish.

In fact, my father also revealed, Cole was even able to speak with his late grandmother. He uses that to open up to Lynn in a scene that basically ensured the Oscar nominations Collette and Osment would receive. They communicate with raw honesty and messy emotions, interjected only briefly by a Spooky Ghost in the form of a bloody cyclist (the sole fatality of the road accident that is causing their standstill, yet allows them to at last begin communicating).

My father telling me of this grandmother bit had a special resonance between us: his mother had died the year this movie was released, and it was my first experience with a burgeoning understanding of mortality, loss, and grief. (Countless others lost loved ones in 1999 and THEY didn’t get fucked up by this movie, but I digress.)

One of the hardest things for Anxious Adult Josh to see was Lynn’s exasperated despair over her son (“We’re not gonna make it if we can’t talk to each other.”). It triggered memories of my own mother who, in every one of my dark moments, would make it clear she would go through hell and high water to protect me. I just wish I could have believed it every time she said it. Because I know she did. And I know she still would.

The other hardest thing for me to process is that Toni Collette didn’t win that Oscar, because SHE. FUCKING. SLAYED.

And while I anxious-ed my way through the Real Shit scenes, and laughed at the Scary Shit scenes, I began to piece together what the ghost of my younger self couldn’t: a method. Seeing familiar emotional trauma was difficult, but when intertwined with the supernatural it became cathartic. I was laughing at ghosts to scare away memories.

It could be the very thing that made me a horror freak in the first place. Looking to escape Real Shit is easy when Scary Shit is holding your attention. It could explain why horror films, despite their lack of inclusivity, still have fans within marginalized communities across the globe.

It wasn’t easy for Cole to overcome his traumas. Multiple cries for help were ignored because the people in his life mistook them for deviance. Fear clouded them as well. But when people finally listen to him, he is able to pay it forward.

Using his supposed “curse” to ask what the dead want from him, Cole becomes to them what he needed all along: somebody to listen. And by finally listening to the ghostly but harmless Kyra, he is able to discover she was murdered, and uses this knowledge to save others from the same fate. It is one of the most basic fables we are taught to trust in: that our differences can become our greatest assets.

Which is why it is worth noting that Cole never stops seeing those diddly-dang Deadites. For all his new found confidence and happiness, he is still tethered to his fearful past. He will always be communicating with the specters until they are able to move on (in Malcolm’s case, disappearing into some white light like Grizabella in CATS). But he will always be seeing them: the restless spirits, reminders of great loss, bearing stories of tragedy.

But if Haley Fucking Joel Fucking Osment can talk to a hundred ghosts a day, then I know I can talk to the only ghost that truly bugs me.

He’s just a kid after all.

He just wants to be heard. Even when his adult self is waxing poetic about Argento and Bava, or boring somebody to tears with a passionate argument for why Jason X is truly a gift to us all.

And while I can only apologize to Mischa F*$#&!g Barton for misunderstanding her all these years, I still believe I deserve an apology for what Marissa Cooper put me through, because she served DRAMA on the reg over in Orange County, and my gay, anxious, drama-loving ass was NOT. READY.