By Geno McGahee
M. Night Shyamalan was considered the man in Hollywood after his 1999 hit “THE SIXTH SENSE.” He couldn’t miss…at least that’s what we thought…until we saw THE VILLAGE, LADY IN THE WATER, THE HAPPENING, THE LAST AIRBENDER, DEVIL and AFTER EARTH, but this is when he was in his groove. He followed SIXTH SENSE with the great flick UNBREAKABLE in 2000 and then released SIGNS in 2002. It was an alien movie with Mel Gibson and it’s hard to miss with Gibson.
SIGNS is either loved or hated by most and it proved to be the turning point in the career of Shyamalan. This film isn’t as good as the two that came before it and it seemed to be all that the filmmaker had left in quality. Reverend Graham Hess (Gibson) has lost his faith after the death of his wife, leaving his family in turmoil. His brother, Merrill (Joaquin Phoenix), has moved into the house to help raise the two young children, Morgan (Rory Culkin) and Bo (Abigail Breslin). The actors in this are very good and do a very good job. I really liked the family as a whole and the inner struggle that they each are going through.
Morgan and Bo discover a huge crop circle. Graham is convinced it’s a hoax, but the children think that it may be something more. The more that Graham looks at it and the way it was done, the more he thinks that human hands may not have anything to do with it. Crop circles are happening all over the world and the newscaster says that it’s either the world’s biggest hoax or it’s for real.
Graham’s wife was hit by a car driven by Ray Reddy (M. Night Shyamalan). I hate this. I hate when the filmmaker insists on being part of the film. Shyamalan cannot hold the scene with Gibson and can barely be believable walking to his car. Any other filmmaker would turn him away as an extra…but he’s got a pretty big role in this. This is almost as bad as that wrinkled-up reject, Stan Lee, and his insistence to put his raison face in every Marvel movie.
Reddy sees Graham around town and proves to be a reminder of the incident, and everyone in the town still looks to Graham for guidance but he doesn’t even believe in God anymore. Well, at least he says he doesn’t. That fact immensely bothers the family and has rattled their foundation.
UFOs appear in the sky all over the world and now it seems that death may be eminent for the family. In one of the coolest scenes in the film, a kid’s party video shows an alien walk by. It was very neat and what made it so effective was the fact that you never get a good shot of them until that point. They really keep the aliens under wraps and that is something that you don’t see nowadays, but you saw all the time in the 1970s. You saw a hand of the monster…a quick glimpse, but you didn’t get it from jump. Here, we saw an alien hand, a leg, and then we finally got to see the entire thing. It was worth the wait.
The aliens are ready for attack and the family huddles up in the house, boarding up the windows. If it doesn’t work for aliens, it will be helpful with the next zombie attack. The aliens do attack and this is when this film gets a little muddled. They are extremely advanced, BUT their attacks are very primitive and then when you find out that they came to a planet made of primarily water and it’s water that kill them, it really adds to the overall absurdity. Shyamalan 
wrote a good script, but ran out of steam at the end of the script. He couldn’t put the pieces together in a way that made any sense and I think that’s why this movie gets a lot of bad press.
SIGNS is not a masterpiece, but it is an interesting story about a broken family in crisis that comes back together after a traumatic event. This has its fair share of annoying and unbelievable characters and dialogue, but Gibson, Phoenix and the rest of the main cast sell this. I especially liked Gibson’s journey from start to finish. He may have his mental problems, but the guy can act! I recommend SIGNS, but you can stop here in the Shyamalan collection.
Rating: 7.5/10
[poll id=”4″]
It was after this film that I stopped watching the movies made by M. Night Shymabalan. I don’t like scratching my head in confusion at the end. I agree that Mel Gibson and the other actors who protrayed the members of his family were excellent. Maybe I need to watch this again. All I remember is the scene in the bedroom when Mel walks in and sees his kids with the funny looking helmets on their heads to keep the aliens from reading their thoughts.
You should! There is a lot of silly crap in this, but I think that it’s overall pretty good!
Geno