By M. Night Shyamalan, 2002.
Starring Abigail Breslin, Rory Culkin, Mel Gibson, Cherry Jones, Joaquin Phoenix.
Rating: 8/10, 5.5/10.
I didn’t want to see Signs. Not because it didn’t look good—it did look fairly good, I thought—but because of the horrendous advertising that surrounded it. Every movie I’ve seen in a big theatre in the past, oh, year and a half, had previews for it. Last June, I would see previews, think, "maybe I should see that!" and then the preview would say "coming to theaters everywhere August 2002." This is ridiculous, if you ask me. But then a friend of mine wanted to see a movie, and this was the only one we could remotely agree on. I figured that the whole Shyamalan phenomenon was kind of passing me by—I never saw The Sixth Sense or Unbreakable—so maybe I should give him a chance.
I ended up enjoying myself, though I had a few reservations. Signs, I would say, is one of the more imperfect of the "new thrillers," as I’ve decided to call them. You know what I mean, I talk about them endlessly in these reviews: What Lies Beneath, Panic Room, The Others, Minority Report, and so forth. None of these movies (with the exception of What Lies Beneath, in my humble opinion) approaches perfection, but even with all their flaws, they’re a cause for hope. For all of the nineties, the genre of the thriller languished in the depths of moronic action films, devoid of suspense and subtlety. Recently, though, there’s been a rash of intelligent, relatively quiet, suspenseful, and effective thrillers, which kind of gives me hope for the future of the rest of the film industry. Not much hope, but some.
Signs revolves around Graham Hess (Gibson), a former minister in the rural areas of...um...Pennsylvania, maybe? Anyway, he and his family live on this big cornfield, but then one night there’s crop circles, and then creepy things, and then an alien invasion, basically. Not all in one night, I mean, the creepy things and the invasion come later. The film is brilliant in the way it build tension and suspense, and the way that it contains a world-wide alien invasion during which the action stays firmly inside one house. At the beginning of the invasion we get occasional reports in the form of TV news, but even that eventually stops and we get mostly just the family waiting. Waiting. I want to make a big deal of the fact that a lot of the movie is just waiting, because in today’s entertainment climate, waiting is an almost revolutionary action for film characters to take.
This film is a good example of where my rating system breaks down and stops working. I both liked and disliked the movie, in terms of both entertainment and goodness, more than you’d think by just looking at the scores I gave it. But this is one of those frustrating movies where nearly every good step is countered by another bad one. The excellent acting on the part of most of the cast (especially Culkin and Breslin, who give some of the best child performances in recent memory) was counteracted by the tremendous stinkiness of Joaquin Phoenix, who, one can tell, thinks very hard about how to look as hot as he possibly can in every shot, and thinks very little about anything else. The amazing direction and pacing was counteracted by the horrendous script, and the cheesiness of the ending, especially one particular shot that mirrors the brilliant first one, for which I humbly submit that the director change his name to M. Night Hokeymalan. The spectacular design of (and music during) the opening credits is counteracted by the spectacular way in which those credits do not fit the mood of the film, especially near the beginning.
My two strongest memories of the film, though, remain uncompromised. One: the first clear view of an alien. This could have gone horribly wrong if it was handled in nearly any way other than the way it was, but as it is, it is brilliant—and still, about a month later, it is a horrifying memory. Two: the way the film is not primarily about alien invasion, but more about inner struggles with faith and undealt-with loss. Take that, Independence Day.
read roger ebert's somewhat over-enthusiastic review