Dial M for Night

Rating: 10/10 (10 November 2002)

If M. Night Shyamalan is truly the Alfred Hitchcock of the multiplex generation -- as his prodigious stylistic talent and penchant for cameos suggests -- then composer James Newton Howard deserves credit as his Bernard Herrmann. The score that comes up under the opening credits for Signs is eerie, unsettling stuff, portentous without being overblown. It promises a scary night at the movies, and Signs delivers. This is the creepiest Hollywood thriller in a very long while and almost definitely this year's horror flick par excellence. By employing the same MO as The Sixth Sense -- establish sympathetic characters and believable situations before putting your audience though the wringer -- the writer-director crafts his most suspenseful and unnerving film to date.
Retired pastor and widowed dad Graham (Mel Gibson) finds some strange patterns carved into his cornfield, which he suspects is a well-coordinated local hoax. His younger brother, a failed minor-league baseball player (Joaquin Phoenix), shares his skepticism, but the kiddies aren't so sure, especially when the younger one wakes up in the middle of the night saying she's seen something lurking outside her window.
There's so much more to say about Signs than a mere recap of this straightforward set-up, but it would be doing the film a disservice to reveal its surprises. Shyamalan's methodical pacing and carefully deployed shocks are more effective if you assume as little as possible going in. It's fair to say that the crop circles are no hoax, and that the little farm home that houses Gibson and his brood will come to seem less quaint and more terrifying as things progress. If you bring a date, make sure they've cut their fingernails, or else they'll end up embedded in your forearm from prolonged clutching. It's just that kind of movie.ADAM NAYMAN