A Murky Pseudo-Mystical Meditation

Rating: 5/10 (2 August 2002)

One of the finest films in cinematic history was a meditation on the human condition, more specifically the game-playing of the idle rich, told in the guise of a mystery story. That film was Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Avventura. What made that film an artistic success was that Antonioni was able to hold the suspense of the mystery while he slowly peeled away at the layers to reveal the bankrupt quality of the story's characters. By the end of the picture, the mystery never being solved, the audience is too entranced by the revelation of the characters and the story beneath the surface to care about a resolution. SIGNS attempts to be such a film, but in the end after building suspense and expectation of something really profound the film ends flatly. The film is a meditation on faith, or at least a form of mystical connectivity, enveloped in the dread and fear of an alien invasion but the threads holding it together are not strong enough to move the audience to some form of catharsis or at least sense of wonder about what really motivates the characters. The acting is very good, there are some genuine frights along the way, and some very good moments of humour. Unfortunately, the sum of the parts does not equal a good movie. 5/10.