Abstract

A number of films in recent years have presented characters whose state of existence is proven--by the end of the film--to be different than what the spectator may have originally assumed. Three films that display this feature-- The Others, The Sixth Sense and Fight Club --disclose the information regarding the characters' ontological status in a single, revelatory moment. This study examines the narrative strategies that these films employ in terms of character presentation and event presentation in order to accomplish these ontological revelations. These tactics of narrative presentation are then compared and analysed in order to find out how they epistemologically position the film spectator.