Yet another gem from America's newest great filmmaker

Rating: Null/10 (4 August 2002)

Just a few points to make at the beginning to manage expectations, since the movie's advertisements and its summer release date has made some people confused:
Signs is not filled with action. If you were expecting that, you've obviously never seen an M. Night Shyamalan movie. Shyamalan makes quiet movies with closed boundaries.
Signs is not filled with great special effects. If you were expecting them, you've obviously never seen an M. Night Shyamalan movie. Shyamalan does sparse, human-centric movies. He is the exact opposite of George Lucas, who paints across a broad canvas laden with effects. Somewhere in between these two rests Steven Spielberg.
Signs is not hard sci-fi. The sci-fi elements of the plot collapse pretty readily under even the most superficial inspection. But that leads to the most important point:
Signs is not really about the plot. Shyamalan films have always focused more on character and environment and have mostly relegated plot to one of many tools to accomplish that end. Signs is no different.
No, Signs is a study of how people react to unexpected events of huge import (either personal or global); how they react to the unknown. The film groups people into one of two groups (those who look at such events as all part of a plan and those who see it as random circumstance) and watches to see what happens as people discover in which group they actually lie, as well as what happens when one crosses from one group to the other. The ending I think firmly plants Shyamalan in one of those groups, but I won't say which here.
I couldn't help but draw some parallels between the feelings the main characters go through on the climactic night and the feelings many Americans felt during the first hours following the initial plane crash on 9/11. We knew something big and horrible was happening, but could not at that point understand the exact dimensions of it all. News coverage was filled with rumor and speculation, and those of us not at the WTC or Pentagon were waiting to see what horrible thing would happen next and wondered if it would directly hit us instead of the folks far away on the television screen. The tv-watching family of Signs experiences much the same sensations before being brought into the unfolding events in their own small world.
Shyamalan creates this atmosphere expertly, flexing his filmcraft muscles often in establishing the main characters, their quirks and motivations, and their relationships with one another. Signs reflects his biggest use of humor of his Big Three movies (Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and now Signs), and brings great performances out of his cast, including two wonderful child performances. Mel Gibson is sufficiently understated, while Joaquin Phoenix plays his most "normal" role of recent years well.
One thing to watch for is how Shyamalan uses cultural shorthand a lot in this movie. Images or events throughout Signs invoke a number of other films, allowing him to cue the audience to establish expectations rather than sacrificing his character work to fill in those blanks. When the plot reminds us strongly of a couple of particular films, Shyamalan trusts the audience to understand the implications of that and moves on. When a couple of scenes directly invoke Blair Witch, Shyamalan hints to us how we should react to the next set of scenes.
Overall, an excellent film, one of the best of the year to date. Shyamalan is well on his way toward building a corpus of work that will be studied in film schools around the globe one day.