Sign of the Times

Rating: 1/10 (23 January 2007)

Preacher loses his faith in God, gets it back by whacking an Alien.
What is wrong with this picture? There it is... poor craftsmanship due to Superfluous Novelty. Shyamalan's "style" seems to just that... all style, no substance. Maybe he is trying to use the William Burroughs method of "cut-up" storytelling - you write something - chop it into snippets - and then reassemble it randomly. I believe that Anime is written this way. Put a lot of unrelated ideas on little slips of paper, mix them in a bowl, and then pull out a few to create characters and plot.
Like: Samurai/Robot/Bus driver - good protagonist! Amphibious/Demon/Wombats - what a villain! Moon Landing/Nuclear/Earthquake - sets the stage!
All this makes you SEEM to be creative and innovative. But it all falls flat without some thread of continuity to it. Some people can do it (i.e., "The Birds") and others can't (i.e., "Signs").
This movie tries to do 2 things simultaneously and succeeds at neither. As a morality fable of 'lost faith', it's main character is not believable to me - he's just a plot device. As some sort of Science Fiction 'thriller', it was not suspenseful and relied on pointless and overused 'boogeyman' thrills - I suppose it looks good in the trailers to get the crowds in.
I liked "The Sixth Sense" , it was OK. I watched "Unbreakable" and found it pointlessly arbitrary and confusing; like a jigsaw puzzle made from several different boxes. I have not seen "The Village" or "Lady in the Water", but they both sound like a further deterioration in his film-making career.