The Signs of Shyamalan

Rating: 8/10 (20 May 2017)

Shyamalan can be both very good at creating tension, building a story and so, but also having some of the most embarrassing moments of his movies in just one movie and this happens here.
This movie tells the story of a little family who lives in a house in the middle of a cornfield in Pensylvania. One day, mysterious crop circles appears in their cornfield and all over the world and the start to being suspicious of an extraterrestrial attack. This is the story and it's very well introduced to us. The story in itself was great, except for a few things I will tell you later, and gave some emotional moments but also very tense moments. The movie stays very well in all of it's duration, except the last ten minutes or so, which were a big let down from the whole movie and left me a bit cold (well from here I save the awesome score by James Newton Howard and the performance of Mel Gibson).
Mel Gibson provides a good performance, sometimes a bit odd, but overall is good, and also Joaquin Phoenix who provides some very good scenes with Mel Gibson, even the little girl, Abigail Breslin, had some time to shine and to help you to connect with this family, but I personally don't like the little boy. It's true that he provides some very emotional moments with his father, Mel Gibson, but that's not until the last part of the movie, in the rest he provides very awkward moments that don't feel natural for a ten-year-old kid. I'm specially talking about the thing that he kills his dog with a knife at the beginning of the movie, or the things of the aliens, that he seems to know a lot about, or the phrases he says randomly like "He's going to burn it all" or the thing of the silver cones in their heads. This is one of the main flaws of the movie that didn't worked for me.
But in the technical aspects you cannot say that Shyamalan is not a master of manipulation. He is able to show just the thing he wants to show you without leaving too much time for reacting. One example of this is the scene where Mel Gibson enters at night in the cornfield, the tension builds up with the music but suddenly stops and you think nothing is going to happen, but then he drops his flashlight and when he turns it on again you can see for a second this alien crossing the cornfield near him, the music enters and you realize this really and amazing way of frightening you. His way of filming, moving the camera away of the things you really want to see, just keeps this tension along the movie. The music created by James Newton Howard is one of the other things that add a lot of tension to this. He is able to create quirky fast themes but also very tense moments to keep you on the edge of your seat.
I recommend you this movie if you're a Shyamalan fan. You will surely enjoy it as I did, except this little awkward moments he has usually in his movies.