A little movie disguised as a big one

Rating: 9/10 (4 August 2002)

Writer/director M. Night Shyamalan likes to make slow, quiet movies. These are the kind of movies that normally would play at the local art house theater and makes $500,000 before going to video. The difference with his movies is that he makes his little movies about big subjects with A-list casts. Of course, a little movie called "The Sixth Sense" has pretty much guaranteed an audience for whatever he does.
That his movies are as successful as they are is almost a mystery. He doesn't rely on big effects, crashing soundtracks and MTV editing, but uses long scenes and silence to build tension and lets his characters and story "breathe." Not traits that generally sell a lot of movie tickets.
"Signs" is a "BIG" movie. It's ID4. Close Encounters of the Third Kind. War of the Words. V. Except it's told from the point of view of the guy usually listed in the credits as "Farmer #3" It's an alien invasion movie that almost forgot to include the aliens. There's no big political machinations. No military. No panicking townsfolk. No giant spaceships blowing up large buildings.
What there is a one family. One small, insignificant family whose entire existence is changed by.... something. By keeping the focus small, on ordinary people, not the scientists, the president, the fighter pilot, etc., Shyamalan gives us people we can relate to; not necessarily people to cheer for in rousing patriotic battle, but people who are us. Watching Will Smith dogfight with aliens in Independence Day was fun, but how many of us will get to do that when the ETs arrive?
Story-wise, the aliens are just a means to an end anyway. The alien arrival plot is just the surface - an excuse for Shyamalan to ponder the big questions of God and fate, chance and destiny. Do things just happen or do they happen for a reason? I suppose your enjoyment of the film come the finale will be dependent on your views on those "big questions." I may not agree 100& with his conclusions but I can't fault his method of presenting them.
As with his previous films "Sixth Sense" and "Unbreakable" the pace is slow. Some may get bored waiting for the promised aliens but as before, the pace allows plenty of time to become emotionally involved with this family and the events going on. We feel the tension as they do. Sure we want things to happened faster, but they don't. Events don't happen at the pace we want, we wait and we get more anxious waiting, more nervous, we question. Waiting is worse sometimes then the jolt we were waiting for.
Shyamalan isn't afraid of waiting. He uses it, just as he uses silence and darkness. Often, he allows the silence to go on longer than we are comfortable with so when the sound does come back, the effect is amplified. One scene occurs in pitch black, with the screen in darkness for what feels like minutes (although is probably only 10-20 seconds) with only sound effects. The effect is genuinely scary, even more so when the light finally comes back.
The packed theater jumped, screamed and was truly shocked at least a half dozen times. This is truly a frightening film, a masterful use of "less-is-more" film-making where every slight glimpse of aliens generates a gasp.
The film is not without it's flaws. The finale has a weird pace to it. because the focus hasn't been on the "big event" of earth vs. aliens, the resolution occurs off screen and thus seems rather convenient. For a moment, it's as if the story has just ended but without the satisfaction of a real resolution. Furthermore, there is certain amount of irony in asking the question "are there coincidences or do things happen for a reason?" in a movie; movies being specifically scripted in a such a way that there are no coincidences, every character trait, ever action, ever line of dialogue has a specific place and has been put there by the screenwriter to be used later to resolve the plot. Here we have a movie that answers the question "is this just a coincidence?" with events that are scripted not to be. Movie themselves are self-contained universes with their own "God" - the screenwriter, so it's somewhat disingenuous to use a movie to tackle the question. But the trip is still one worth taking. Shyamalan is quickly becoming one of my favorite storytellers; more than just a director, a storyteller with a singular vision and the skills and patience to tell big, quiet stories.