Corny Sci-Fi Thriller. Pun Intended.

Rating: 4/10 (17 June 2009)

So you thought that all those crop circles were made by hoaxers with too much time on their hands? Naaah, no way! They're all made by aliens! And if anyone is wondering why aliens might want to spend time making crop circles, the answer is simple. They're a sort of extraterrestrial sat-nav, designed to guide alien spaceships into safe landing sites.
That, at least, is the theory put forward in "Signs". Most Hollywood films about alien invasions ("Independence Day", "War of the Worlds") deal with their subject matter from an American perspective. I mean, who in America wants to see a film about aliens invading Russia, or China, or Paraguay? "Signs" is even more insular in its perspective, showing us not the effect of the alien invasion on mankind in general, or even its effect on America in general, but rather its effect on one particular family living on a farm in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
The Hess family weren't always farmers. The paterfamilias Graham Hess was originally a clergyman who lost his faith after his wife Colleen was killed in a traffic accident and now cares for his son Morgan and daughter Bo with the help of his younger brother Merrill, a former minor league baseball player who, although talented, never made it into the major leagues because of his reckless style of play. (Bo? I thought clergymen were supposed to name their children after saints of the Christian Church, not eighties film stars).
The film tells the story of how Graham and Merrill manage to beat off the nasty green-skinned invaders. In the process Graham recovers his faith in God after Morgan's life is saved by what seems like a series of coincidences; Graham then resumes his clerical career. The title "Signs" refers not only to the crop circles but also to these coincidences, which Graham interprets as signs of divine providence.
If anyone is wondering how to kill a hostile alien, "Signs" offers some sound advice. Hitting them over the head with a baseball bat is apparently a good move, but the best method is to empty a jug of water over them, water being a substance which is intensely toxic to aliens. This raises a whole series of questions which the film never answers. We are told that the aliens are short of food and have come to Earth to harvest humans to eat, but what we are never told is why they have chosen to come to a planet the greater part of which is covered in water and which contains significant amounts of water vapour in its atmosphere. Why do they intend to feast upon creatures whose flesh is mainly composed of water (and therefore presumably poisonous to them)? And what do they do when it rains? They don't even seem to carry an umbrella. The normal answer to questions like these is to say "Ah, well, they're an alien species, so their thought processes are quite different to ours", but this does not really serve as an explanation. It is unlikely that any species could have evolved unless its thought processes tend towards self-preservation rather than self-destruction.
A more fundamental flaw than plot-holes of this nature is the fact that "Signs" evades some of the most fundamental questions raised by its basic premise. Although the film purports to deal with a religious topic, and its central character is a former clergyman, it never asks "How might our view of God, and our religious beliefs, be changed by contact with intelligent alien life-forms?" Graham recovers his faith because he believes that God intervened to save Morgan's life, but never asks himself why He did not intervene to save Colleen. (Or, for that matter, why He did not intervene to save the aliens, who are presumably also His creations, from having glasses of water chucked over them).
The role of Graham was, apparently, offered to Paul Newman and Clint Eastwood, both of whom wisely turned it down. Mel Gibson, unfortunately, was not so discerning, as "Signs" is a very disappointing film. This was only the second of M. Night Shyamalan's films that I have seen, the first being "The Village", which I enjoyed a lot more. That film worked well both as a thriller and as a parable about the dangers of nostalgia for some imagined past, and Shyamalan managed the difficult feat of providing it with a twist ending which is both original and satisfying. "Signs", by contrast, is a corny (pun intended) sci-fi thriller masquerading as a meaningful exploration of religious and philosophical issues. Both Gibson and that talented actor Joaquin Phoenix are wasted. 4/10