Why “The Sixth Sense”’s 25th Anniversary Is Full-Circle for M. Night Shyamalan — and Filmmaker Daughter Ishana (Exclusive)

1999 was a big year for ‘The Sixth Sense’ writer-director M. Night Shyamalan

M. Night Shyamalan is celebrating 25 years of seeing dead people.

When asked about the Aug. 6 anniversary of his 1999 classic The Sixth Sense, the filmmaker asks PEOPLE, “Is that right? 25? … When I think about that, it's wild.”

M. Night, 53, became a Hollywood breakout sensation upon the release of the six-time Oscar-nominated The Sixth Sense, which starred Bruce Willis as a child psychologist and Haley Joel Osment as his patient who can commune with ghosts.

The horror hit holds a special place in M. Night’s heart, he says, not just because it launched his career. “I was close to her age when I wrote Sixth Sense,” he says of Ishana, his 24-year-old daughter who has since become a filmmaker in her own right.

Related: Sixth Sense's Haley Joel Osment Says He Grew a Beard to 'Hide in Public' After Childhood Fame

“I think my mom was pregnant with me when she was on that red carpet,” Ishana recalls to PEOPLE of The Sixth Sense’s 1999 premiere. M. Night and wife Bhavna Vaswani share daughters Saleka, Ishana and Shivani.  

Ishana’s feature film directorial debut was the thriller The Watchers starring Dakota Fanning, which hit theaters on June 7. Although 1992's Praying with Anger preceded The Sixth Sense as her father’s first feature-length movie, she says, “I'm obviously thinking about it a lot in terms of [premiering The Watchers]... It was his first big moment and I feel like it was such a representative movie of him.”

The first-time writer-director adds, “I wanted the same thing for Watchers, for it to just represent how I feel about the world and just do the best I can.”

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For M. Night, having one of his movies — the Josh Hartnett-starring Trap (in theaters now) —  arrive the same summer as his daughter’s first is a special full-circle moment. It’s a reminder, he says, that from The Sixth Sense to 2015’s The Visit to 2021’s Old and beyond, he always feels “that I don't know if [each movie will] ever get made. I don't know if I'll ever get to make another one… If this is the last one, I want it to just represent me.”

Related: 'Silence of the Lambs at a Taylor Swift Concert' Is How M. Night Shyamalan Pitched His New Thriller Trap

When asked about advice her father has given as she steps behind the camera herself, Ishana says her father’s lesson was simple: “Stop talking about it. Just go make a short film.” 

Since their “father-daughter relationship is very much synonymous with our mentor-mentee relationship,” she adds, M. Night “always pushes me to just move past or move through the anxiety. As opposed to stopping and like angst-ing about it, which I very much do.”

Trap is in theaters now.

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