No tension, just boring

Rating: 3/10 (29 April 2003)

Night Shyamalan made a great movie with "The Sixth Sense". The plot was good, the tension and suspense built up as it should and the ending was unexpected. Then came "Unbreakable". I gave it a very low rating here, because the action was sooooo sloooow, there hardly was any tension and an unexpected ending lacked. Sadly in "Signs" Shyamalan follows his tradition of "Unbreakable". "Signs" lacks everything a good movie should have. If my wife had not wanted to continue, I would have switched it off halfway. Hardly anything happens, and the events that do happen are far from unexpected. No tension at all is being built up. One knows from the very start that the events have something to do with some kind of extra terrestrial life, and this suggestion is repeated so often that extreme boredom overcomes the viewer. It is clear that we get to see something of these ET's at some point, but when this happens at last there is no tension, no horror, no unexpected action, no drama, nothing at all that can grip the viewer. The (few) principal characters react frightened from the start to the end but what are they frightened of? And what is the plot? I don't know. There is no plot. So this was the last movie I ever saw by Shyamalan. He made one great movie ("The Sixth Sense") but he seems not to be able to reproduce even some of the fine elements of that one.