Very Good movie, intellectual and thrilling..

Rating: 8/10 (5 August 2002)

Signs is a very good movie. I think it is the midpoint between Sixth Sense and Unbreakable as far as M.Night Shyamalan is concerned. In Sixth Sense.. The movie was greatly successful because of its thrilling story, while unbreakable had more of an intellectual debate that frustrated some seekers of thrill.. Signs is in between.. Signs is thrilling, but in the same time, Shyamalan proposes an intellectual dialog about faith, luck and pre-destination. Do things just happen or is there a plan? It's a respectable dialog though he obviously favors one side over the other.
Signs is the story of a priest. Rev. Graham Hess who loses faith in his religion when his wife dies horribly in a freak accident. One that he failed to understand or accept and caused to completely reject the idea that there is any kind of guiding force guiding this world. Graham lives in a farm in a small town with two little kids and his brother who moved in after his failure in making a career in baseball.
This small fragile family is immediately thrust into the events of an Alien invasion. Unlike war of the worlds and most other alien movies, this movie is not really about the aliens. This is why focusing on how and why the aliens came and how and why the aliens left is a waste of time. The movie is using this incredible event (an alien invasion) to show how this small broken family is dealing with a crisis. How the faith of the family is tested in this dilemma.
Almost all the aspects of "sci-fi" and thrill in the movie can be found in other movies, but it's Shyamalar's ability to collect all these features in his movie and making them FIT. They fit perfectly. There isn't a scene when you laugh instead of being scared, I looked around the movie theatre as I watched the movie.. And when an anticipated scary moment was coming (someone is opening a door or looking through a hole) people stopped chewing their pop corn.. This is the sign of a true thrilling movie. When you don't feel that the scenes are standard clichÃ©s but actual parts of the story.
As far as acting goes.. All the actors did a superb job led by Gibson. Phoenix is great and the four family members portray anguish, joy and fear with excellence. Shyamalan himself does a small role and he is a dreadful actor. Not only that, but I felt his appearance was a poor choice and broke the story a bit. Shyamalan looks Indian as it is his heritage. And it seemed very out of place to see a person of Indian origin in a supposedly very small town south of Philly. It's like casting a Native American actor to play a role in a movie about 15th century Scottland.. Makes no sense.
The sound and music are very good, nothing original, but they do a good job of creeping you up.
Finally, as far as Shyamalan's intellectual part of the movie.. It will fall to the individual's beliefs. Personally of course, I liked the ending because it chimed in with my beliefs, but I did feel that he made the ending too blunt and open.. He could have done it in more subtle ways.