Enjoyable thriller

Rating: Null/10 (26 January 2003)

I had heard a lot of good things about "Signs" before finally seeing it, but I was a little let down in the end. The basic plotline is inspired by "War of the Worlds" (explicitly mentioned by one of the characters) but the "meat" of the story concerns the parallel terror happening in a man's daily life on Earth as he deals with the death of his wife.
In terms of literary analysis, Shyamalan seems a bit heavy-handed at the film's climax in the way he calls attention to the themes he's (up until then) weaved fairly subtly through his movie. In terms of sci-fi geekdom, the plot device which rescues our heroes in the end is, I'm sorry, completely unbelievable ("Worst plot device ever!") for all kinds of reasons which I'll be glad to explain at length down at the hobby shop.

In the end, the movie is exciting, scary and certainly worth seeing, and I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that Mel Gibson turns in another great, "human" performance in this movie and that all the rest of the cast is pretty good too. It's a fun piece of brain candy with slight pretensions to high art.