No Signs of life

Rating: Null/10 (5 March 2004)

One of the most unfortunate films events of recent years was the unexpected success of a little-trailed Bruce Willis ghost story movie. Mr Moonlighting's career had been in long, slow decline apart from the blip-boost of his Pulp Fiction cameo, but 'The Sixth Sense' put him back in the big league, temporarily at least.
For many of us seduced by the hype of TSS, and especially the write-up for its emerging writing talent - the exotically named 'M Night Shyamalan' actually sitting and watching the movie was a bit of an anticlimax. Fairly leaden performances, portentous script and a fairly hackeneyed and well trailed twist at the end.
However it seemed to seal M Night's reputation as a screenwriter of note, I guess based on box office alone, a reputation his two subsequent films have not borne out. But where Unbreakable was merely dull, Signs is basically appalling.
The idea has taken shape that this guy is a genius and up to handling the challenge of being director, writer and producer of a single project. He acquits none of these well in Signs. Despite having two of the great action-event movie producers riding shotgun; Marshall/Kennedy, Signs is so unbelievably leaden for the first hour-and-a-half that my finger hovered tantalisingly over the stop button.
Most infuriating is the artifical and non-naturalistic 'style' that someone (I suspect M. Night) has directed the actors to use. This combines an utter lack of emotional range with non-normal response to situations, interspered with sickly outpourings of inner belief or the characters acting as mouthpieces for cod philosophy.
Two horrendous moments spring to mind in the film: the first, where Gibson and Phoenix sit watching television coverage of the alien encounters, Gibson launches it a 'there are two types of people speech'. This rambling, inelegant and absolutely unprofound observation of whether people have faith or not to see them through is treated as a brimming eyed revelation by Phoenix's character while the audience thinks 'huh?'.
What is even more cringeworthy is that you can feel that the writer thinks - wow this is really great writing. This is so far above the crappy naturalistic speech of most Hollywood movies. No, it's not: it's turgid, badly written, inconsistent and vacuous pandering to your fanbase and the constructed image of yourself as a 'great writer'.
The second occasion is the 'when your were born' speeches that Gibson regales his children with as the aliens are breaking into the house with the intention of eating everyone for breakfast. Pointless, artifical 'moments' of profundity when any honest and naturalistic attempt to capture that moment, that emotion would get its true fear and horror.
Actually, let me change my mind. The most truly awful moment of this film is when Gibson gets to exchange some final words with his wife who happens to have been cut in half by a car but is still totally aware and communicative seconds before slipping softly into death. This is not how people die, let alone how they live.
It needs not me to add to the chorus of derision about the basic plot of the film and its alien invasion theme. It's not so much as picking holes in the plot as attempting to create something coherent and logical out of it. Naked aliens that cannot stand WATER? Better sack the alien commander responsible for researching the invasion then. The idea that they might travel 500 million light years to be defeated by a garden hose is totally risible.
Of course M Night devotees will say the story is actually a PARABLE which mundane viewers expecting a story and real characters are missing. The water can be viewed as baptismal, the aliens as our internal demons, the house as the isolation of the soul, the whole event as a proof of faith. Yawn. There is more insight into the human condition in 5 minutes of Scorsese or Alan Parker than in hours of this simulated, meretricious garbage which is intended to appeal to our vague spiritual yearnings and need for pasteurised morality.