The Sixth Sense, N. Shyamalan's 1999 parapsycho-thriller, and 12 Monkeys, a sci-fi dystopia from 1995 written by D&J Peoples and directed by Terry Gilliam, have very little in common at first sight. Close below the surface, though, we notice one basic common issue: the question of reality and sanity. In both pictures one of the protagonists is a psychiatric patient: in The Sixth Sense, a young boy who claims to see dead people attempting to communicate with him; in 12 Monkeys, a man who claims to be a time traveler from a future where the Earth's surface has been rendered uninhabitable by a deadly virus.

Themes with a scope beyond a generally accepted physical reality inevitably give rise to important practical problems. It is impossible - and not always desirable - to resolve them all within the scope of a two-hour picture, so a certain number of plot holes is to be expected. The need for a fair degree of suspension of disbelief is a well-established trait of the genres discussed here. The interesting question is, in what ways does Shymalayan's and Peoples'/Gilliam's respective treatment of their subject attempt to deal with the inevitable plot holes, and how successful the two approaches are.

The plot and its holes: 12 Monkeys
In 12 Monkeys, James Cole, a convict, is sent back from the year 2035 to 1996 to locate the source of a virus that has rendered the Earth's surface uninhabitable for humans. The film's major plot holes are related to the concept of communication across time: time travel technology and communication with time travelers.
- Sending someone into the past requires an elaborate machinery to which the subject is connected by a multitude of cables and clamps. At the receiving end, he simply pops up in the middle of an arbitrary situation. No receiving station, no technicians to disconnect him.
- Yet, the 2035 scientists are able to yank James right back from the 1990s to their own time without connecting him to any machinery, and in fact without him knowing he is about to be taken back.
- The subject is inserted naked into the time machine, presumably because the technology requires it. Otherwise, James' principals would not risk sending him off naked, since he is supposed to be inconspicuous to gather information. In 1990, he has to scavenge for whatever clothing he can find, with rather spectacular results; he lands naked in WW1; his apparel is barely adequate in 1996, again presumably the result of improvisation. But, when Jose and the astrophysicist arrive in 1996, they are fully equipped for the work at hand.
- 2035 time travelers are said to have monitoring devices in their teeth. The scientists keep sufficient track of James to know where to yank him back from (the mental institution, WW1 and the creek in the woods), but somehow subsequently they don't know that he had been sent to the wrong year or that he had been in a psychiatric hospital.
- Until the street person in 1996 tells him, James has no idea of the tracking device's existence, but eventually he pulls out exactly the right teeth.

The plot and its holes: The Sixth Sense
In The Sixth Sense we encounter a "species" different from ordinary humans, i.e. sprits or ghosts. They have properties that distinguish them from living people and constrain their possibilities to communicate with people, manipulate objects etc., which is where the boy protagonist and his special abilities come in. Cole Sear, eight years old, sees dead people and is badly frightened by the experience. Dr Crowe, a child psychologist, volunteers to help him, hoping to resolve his own trauma caused by a previous failure in a similar case.
Shyamalan obviously bases his concept of ghosts on the Western culture's popular perception of them, adding his own original notion of dead people "not knowing that they are dead". Thus, Crowe himself turns out to be a ghost, murdered by the patient he had failed to help.
- Cole sees the dead people as they were when they died: with shotwounds, bruises, vomiting from the effects of poison... all except Crowe, who appears as a normal, well-groomed person.
- Cole hides out in a church, where the ghosts can't get at him... none except Crowe, who walks in and chats with Cole, completely at his ease.
- Ghosts can't normally manipulate physical objects: notably in the case of the poisoned girl, who needs Cole's help to call her father's attention to a videotape containing evidence of her murder. Yet Crowe opens doors, plays tape recordings, takes notes, changes clothes - although from a supply limited to the items he handled the night of his death - and throws rocks without noticeable problems.

The major plot hole of The Sixth Sense lies in the very concept of dead people not knowing that they are dead.
Shyamalan's dead obviously have thought processes and a perception of the physical world: they see and hear the living, they feel jealousy, frustration, the need to communicate, the wish to disclose a killer. But their perception and evaluation does not include themselves, their everyday life and what in living people would be their physiological functions.
- Although he has a functioning mind, Crowe does not notice that he no longer needs to eat, drink, relieve himself or take showers.
- Neither does he notice that there is no neuro-muscular feedback from his body: movement, balance, physical exertion etc.
- Although of course a film does not have to show every detail in a protagonist's life, Crowe the ghost would presumably at some stage make an unsuccessful attempt to communicate with his bank, drive his car, take a cab, get service in a store, and notice that something other than his communication with his wife was malfunctioning?

The sceptic's escape hatch
12 Monkeys opens with an alleged quotation from a text by a certified mental patient, prophecying the virus disaster. All through the movie ample evidence indicates that James really is a time traveler, but the 1990's psychiatrists also have a plausible case, supported by common sense, that he is delusional. In addition, the whole movie is marked by James' recurring dream, hinting at the possibility of the entire story being a dream.
In basic psychology textbooks we often find drawings that can be interpreted according to how we focus on them: two faces in profile make up the elaborate foot of a bowl, or we can see a bird with its beak up in a rabbit with its ears up. Similarly, in M.C. Escher's Fish and Scales the small black fish are also small white fish facing the opposite way, and all of them make up scales of two large fish.
This is precisely the way 12 Monkeys is constructed. The viewer's mind is busy deciding wheter it is faced with a bird or a rabbit, or possibly both at the same time. When, after repeated viewings, the plot holes become apparent, they are still relatively unimportant: if the whole thing is a dream or a figment of James' imagination, the finer techological points of time travel don't really matter.

The Sixth Sense leaves no such sceptical escape hatch. We are given all the correct answers: ghosts are real, Cole actually does see them - it is not just something in his mind -, Crowe really is dead, he really does talk to Cole, helps him to accept his "gift", and in return receives Cole's advice how to communicate with his wife...
In such an unambiguous context the plot holes intrude to the point of making the story unintentionally comical, in particular since they undermine the basic idea of the plot, that of dead people not knowing that they are dead.

One of Gilliam's ambitions with 12 Monkeys has been to make people think. He succeeds at this, while at the same time entertaining them and bringing them a stunning audio-visual experience.
Shyamalan, on the other hand, ultimately gives the impression of comitting one of the cardinal sins in a film maker with ambitions beyond that of making money: that of treating his audience as if they were stupid. No amount of visual artistry and philosophical talk, of commitment and expertise on the part of the actors, can compensate for that in the long run.