A very slight film from a one hit director

Rating: 3/10 (18 October 2004)

SIGNS is memorable only in that it fails on so many levels to entertain. This is a film worthy of a PG rating, whether or not it was given one.
The two HESS children were amusing in that they were more attuned to the danger than the two adults; that they possessed the instincts of animals. I suppose I should not have been surprised that the adults would be less likely to believe what was going on around them. Nor should I have been surprised that Father GRAHAM HESS, experiencing a loss of faith, should be the last one to accept the possibility of an alien invasion.
On the whole I felt the problems with SIGNS centred about the two adult male leads.
First I did not feel that the former FATHER GRAHAM HESS, especially as played by Gibson was capable of showing either empathy towards others (the two key scenes involving the poor girl who wanted to confess, and the unfortunate man who had fallen asleep at the wheel, before hitting Gibson's wife). After listening to the girl in the pharmacy he tells his family never to be with her alone; and after hearing Ray's sincere apology, Gibson's character is incapable of acknowledging this).
I thought that the director's judgment was terrible to not letting Gibson lose it totally around the final dinner table, but chose to cut to the beginning of the home invasion. However nothing I had seen would convince me that Gibson could lose it, and break down, as an actor.
[POSSIBLE SPOILERS)
So when the film concludes with Gibson putting the cloth back on, I was not so much surprised, as I was bewildered: his character, at least, as played by Gibson, seemed to be a very unlikely candidate for priesthood!
As to Joaquin Phoenix I could not believe this was a man capable of launching a baseball 507 feet! I found it difficult to swallow watching Phoenix in GLADIATOR going up against a far beefier Russell Crowe (who at least looked the part).
The final sequence in which Merrill has to swing a baseball bat seemed to a token attempt to appease the audience who had seen no combat at all... despite the son's warning that most of the action would be hand to hand, so that nuclear weapons would be avoided.
All in all, I thought the level of invention and execution was on par for what I would expect of a made for TV film (and many would be far more entertaining than SIGNS). Some lame moralizing and philosophising instead of good old fashioned suspense, mystery, thrills and chills!