A PHENOMENON: a BAD movie that appeals to PSEUDO-INTELLECTUALS

Rating: 1/10 (31 August 2002)

A lot of people, including professional reviewers, found "Signs" to be disappointing on many levels and for many reasons.
The movie trailers and ads were blatantly deceptive: this is NOT an "alien" movie, nor was it especially scary. Also, the direction was derivative and simply ripped-off from other films.
Besides that, the screenplay is nonsensical, filled with inconsistencies, and is just illogical in so many ways. These have been described at length and in detail in the reviews and on the IMDB "Signs" message board. Read them. The only question is who was dumber - the aliens or the humans.

But then an interesting phenomenon occurs. We see fanatical and sycophantic comments from a hardcore cadre of people who are in fact pseudo-intellectuals who think only they can fully comprehend what M. Night Shyamalan was trying to do. It appears to make them think they are smarter than they are by imagining they have unique (but in reality false) insights into this movie.
The reality is that "Signs" is a superficial and manipulative movie that is also highly pretentious intellectually. As such, it appeals to those who are equally pretentious. It's an interesting phenomenon.