Indie-pendence Day

Rating: 9/10 (5 August 2002)

M. Night Shyamalan has made 3 films in 4 years that are all very different and yet, a lot alike. They're all somber, frightening, and heartwarming. They're each what used to be called 'slow.' But because of Shyamalan, audience expectations are changing. They're rediscovering what makes films appealing in the first place. They're being engaged, challenged. These 3 films (I don't even have to name them) have stayed within familiar film subjects, but turned those genres on their ears. Ghosts, superheroes, and now, aliens. He's taken all of these subjects and crafted supernatural thrillers around them. What he's done is not necessarily changed the story, but rather, changed the point of view. In "Sixth Sense" he finds the point of view from which ghosts are the most frightening, a child's. "Unbreakable" does a similar thing. What would REALLY happen if a kid found out his dad is a super hero? What if you were faced with the prospect that you couldn't be hurt? Shyamalan doesn't need to change reality in order for a super hero to exist. It's still fantasy but then, it's real. He makes it personal. Shyamalan achieves this by using a smaller stage. We need only see the story of David Dunn (Bruce Willis) dealing with this curse and turning it into a blessing (see also Cole in "Sense").
Compared to the larger story "Signs" is a cross-section of, the film's stage is even smaller. The world is about to be attacked by aliens, house by house. Where else to put the camera then, asks Shyamalan, than in one of those houses? For the most part, this is where he keeps it. One major reason "Signs" works so well is that audiences have already seen the larger story in countless other special effects-driven alien invasion films for decades. Shyamalan says, hey that's great but, how would we REALLY react to an alien invasion? What's scarier, a city-sized spaceship over downtown or the frozen graphic on your television set that says Â‘stay tuned?' Leave it to Shyamalan to think of it first, to encapsulate what makes an event really huge, when the fate of the world really hangs in the balance: CNN goes off the air. All he had to do was show Mel Gibson looking ominously at a television screen.

Shyamalan is a director who understands how to use the craft. He's been compared to Spielberg, not for his penchant for making blockbusters, but because he seems to understand better than most current auteurs how to really make an audience respond. Like Spielberg's older work, M. Night's films have changed the way audiences see movies. It's the element of surprise, stupid. It's where you move the camera and what that camera finds. It's not always what's in the frame but what is just outside of it. Sometimes just holding the camera stationary on, say, the top of a staircase is scarier than anything else you could put in front of it. Shyamalan limits his story to a small cast of characters, a short period of time, in a small town. He keeps it simple. As always he rewards the audience by trusting it. This director's effectiveness lies in his ability to reach an audience that's seen it all. Well, not if M. Night has anything to say about it.
Grade: A-