Not a shred of originality here

Rating: 3/10 (12 August 2002)

Although the director makes a good attempt to scare the heck out us with classic "halloween" elements - strange sounds, movement in the cornfield, things that go bump in the night, and creepy aliens, the film lacks theme and focus, and what results is goofy monster flick. The increasing silliness amongst the characters is a bad sign itself, as if the actors themselves need some comic relief from their own professional descent. The alien/monster genre elements offer nothing new, seen a thousand times on the X-files, with a happy ending even less tantalizing but expected. The "spielburgesque" camera work and character development does little more than introduce a treacly family adrift in rural life. I went in to the film hoping to be mesmerized by the crop circle phenomenon, but the crop circles were little more than a prop to suck you in. We learn nothing more than we already knew, and nothing at all about their truly fascinating history in the England, Europe, and other parts of the world. The screen writing is sloppily, and apparently hurriedly, written. At one point, the character of Merrill Hess, played by Joaquin Phoenix, is developed with a story that he was recognized as hitting the longest home run in school history, by swinging hard and striking out a lot. For anyone who knows anything about baseball, the longest hit has nothing to do with the hardest swing. It's about years of practice connecting and coordinating complex muscle movements in the swing. When you think about it, it sends the wrong message to our kids. Even the messages in Signs "strike out".