My Favorite Sign of All

Rating: 4/10 (11 July 2002)

Last night I attended a screening of 'Signs', the latest motion picture written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan ('The Sixth Sense' and 'Unbreakable'). I looked forward to seeing it! The trailer, already airing on TV, portrayed the movie to be a very exciting sci-fi thriller.
Mel Gibson stars as Graham Hess, a former reverend whose wife was killed in a grisly car accident six months earlier. After that, he quit the ministry and abandoned all belief in the existence of a higher being. The supporting cast includes Joaquin Phoenix, Rory Culkin, Abigail Breslin and Cherry Jones. All turn in good performances.
The movie opens with the discovery of giant crop circles in Hess' corn field. Who made them? Do they have some profound meaning, or is it just a prank? Without exposing the plot, I will tell you that the crop circles are just one of many 'signs' that lead the characters toward the conclusion.
Some early scenes have a good sense of humor, taking full advantage of Gibson's wry wit. The funniest involves Phoenix, Culkin and Breslin in silly tin-foil hats. But the film is frequently as dull as its dark lighting and subdued atmosphere.
**** POSSIBLE SPOILERS ****
At one point, the screen goes totally black -- for what seems like an eternity -- while noises are heard. Then, a face is illuminated (chin up) by a flashlight beam. For a split-second, I thought I had stumbled into a rerun of 'Blair Witch' by mistake. But no, this was just one of several scenes that mimicked other films a bit too closely. I spotted near-perfect renditions of scenes from 'War of the Worlds', 'Field of Dreams', 'Children of the Corn' and others.
The scariest moments are the classic 'bump-in-the-night' variety. Special effects are nearly absent unless you count the alien, who looks like a tall man dressed in two-dollar spandex tights from a Halloween close-out sale.
Yet, the film is spellbinding because you constantly feel as though something really extraordinary is about to happen. Unfortunately, the anticipation is never rewarded and the story ends suddenly with a disappointing and unsatisfying conclusion. (As the credits began to roll, I stared at the screen in disbelief.)
'Signs' is really not the movie portrayed in the trailer. The sci-fi story you came to see -- dealing with extraterrestrials and crop circles -- is merely a subplot to the internal, spiritual strife suffered by Hess (Gibson). Sci-fi is simply a colorful wrapper used to conceal the movie's true focus: a ponderous message about human spirituality.
That brings me to my favorite 'sign' of all. It was bright. It was red. It had four letters. They read: 'E-X-I-T'. So I did.
As I filed out of the theater, I overheard several conversations expressing the same sense of disappointment that I was feeling. A teenage girl, talking to her girlfriend, said it best: "Well, I never want to see that again!"
Ditto.