*insert bad pun using the word "signs" here*

Rating: Null/10 (5 August 2002)

Well... the day after seeing this film, I am still not quite sure whether or not I liked it. I suppose I feel it was worth seeing, but the potential it had and the actual outcome just don't match up.
I'd have to say the best thing about this movie is the skill it shows in audience manipulation. One scene in particular stands out as an example of this; just a moment after one of the big scares, something funny happens, and that moment got the biggest laugh of anything in the movie. Not necessarily because it was the funniest moment, but because it was timed so well, almost as a cathartic release of all that tension. I remember thinking that the filmmakers must have planned this. The overall tone of the film is good; even in the everyday scenes when nothing outwardly scary is going on, there's a feeling of menace, a sense that things are just a little off. The setting is almost too quiet, and the use of only a handful of characters adds to that isolated, creepy feeling.
So up until the last 15 minutes or so of the film, we've got the makings of a wonderful thriller. There were even clues throughout the movie that would have led easily into very interesting plot twists.
*SPOILERS*
For example, the constant emphasis placed on the daughter (her dislike of the drinking water, the use of the word "angel" when Gibson describes her birth, her "feelings" which hint at psychic powers), and the fact that we don't really see firsthand that the aliens are evil until the end. Wouldn't it have been so much cooler if the daughter had turned out to be some kind of extraterrestrial being? Or if the big twist was that the aliens really /weren't/ hostile, and humans had just slaughtered a completely innocent race? Either of those alternate endings would have made the film a much more memorable experience.
*END SPOILERS*
Instead, though, the filmmakers seemed to choose the most predictable, overly sentimental, and ultimately disappointing ending. The most unexpected twist in this film is that there is no unexpected twist. In the end, Shyamalan was really trying to make a movie that was both a heartwarming, thoughtful drama and a science-fiction thriller, and ended up creating a film that, while passably entertaining, will disappoint fans of both genres.