One can't ignore the religious

Rating: 8/10 (5 August 2002)

One can't ignore the religious backdrop of MNS's movies (and his own life)--a mixture of Anglican/Episcopalianism and Roman Catholicism. These are the two tracks of his own background, and inform all of his movies. Sixth Sense has more than a touch of the Catholic idea of Purgatory. Signs' lead character seems to be an Episcopal priest. In Signs, the alien invasion is an Hitchcockian "McGuffin" that allows the director to play with the serious theological problems of theodicy (the existence of evil in a divinely created and directed world) and divine providence. The ending goes flat for those who reject the divine decree that evil is idiotic; specifically, that the aliens who are vulnerable to water invade a world that is mostly water. Their plans are absurd in precisely the way that Hitler at the height of his power planed absurdly; he failed to invade the England that would have fallen to him in a very few weeks and instead invaded the Russia whose endless spaces defeated him. Divine providence ensures that evil in the end is incredibly stupid. One may or may not accept this as true, but it is the belief that underlies these films.
Like it or not, MSN is making religious movies. He is using every Hollywood gimmick to make his movies sell. There is a lot here that is derivative (I have not read all the comments, but surely it is obvious that one of the movies from which he has borrowed is "Day of the Triffids"). Yet the whole idea of an Indian-Philadelphian-Anglican-Catholic-Hitchcockian is so new that I for one intend follow his career with great interest!