Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis)’s Timeline and Summary
- Malcolm begins the movie flying high. He has a great relationship with his wife and he's just gotten an award for helping Philadelphia's children through his work as a psychologist.
- Things don't stay rosy for too long, though. The same evening he receives that award, he and his wife go upstairs to find an intruder lurking in their bathroom.
- It turns out the intruder (Vincent) is one of Malcolm's former patients, and he is not a satisfied customer. Like, to the point where he shoots Malcolm and then himself. That would have been one heck of a Yelp review (even by most Yelp review standards).
- The movie then flashes forward to the following fall, and Malcolm starts treating a boy named Cole who has issues similar to Vincent's.
- Malcolm's not on speaking terms with his wife anymore.
- Malcolm finally earns Cole's trust, and Cole reveals his big secret: he sees dead people.
- Unfortunately, Malcolm doesn't really believe Cole at first, and then tries to quit as Cole's therapist to concentrate on fixing his relationship with his wife.
- After listening to some old tapes of his sessions with Vincent, however, Malcolm realizes that his murderous former patient had also been seeing/hearing dead people.
- Malcolm goes back to Cole and helps him figure out how to deal with the fact that he sees dead people everywhere.
- In turn, Cole indirectly helps Malcolm along toward the realization that Malcolm himself is dead, and also gives him some pointers on how to get his wife to hear him (despite the dead thing).
- As a result of all that, Malcolm can finally let go of earthly life and move into...non-earthly life? We're not sure; it all ends in a white flash, so we're just spitballing here.