The best film of the year.

Rating: 10/10 (4 August 2002)

*very minor spoilers only*
Usually I can accept that people have widely varying opinions of movies. However, I cannot understand anyone who does not consider this film one of the best ever.
M. Night Shyamalan has shown us that he intends to be the best Hollywood director of the new century. His 6th SENSE was terrific, and his UNBREAKABLE even better, but SIGNS is a tour de force.
Shyamalan puts soul into SIGNS like few directors or writers can. He's taken an event so colossal in importance that it could mean the end of the world, and he's turned it into a small, personal story; and in doing so, he makes the film's events of even greater importance to the audience. I can be impressed by Will Smith shooting down aliens, or Agent Mulder gallivanting about the country hunting down the paranormal; but it never feels real and I'm never a part of it.
SIGNS, on the other hand, is as real as it gets. You're on the farmstead with the rest of the Hesses, peering into dark corners, catching glimpses of terrifying spectres on the television, and straining to hear every creak and rustle from outside. No other director can make the story feel as relevent and as genuine as Shyamalan can. Disbelief is not merely suspended, it is torn from your mind and hidden where you cannot find it.
It's also scary. In fact, it's the scariest movie I've ever seen. Today's ubiquitous, gratuitous gore and overdone "look-at-me" CG monsters cannot replicate the genuine terror that lasts the entire movie. One particular scene, shot on home video and broadcast on the Hesses' television, scores a 0 in the eye candy department but a 10 in the freaky department.

And on top of these base instincts, SIGNS piles on simple yet profound moments of sadness, happiness, and humour.
This is not an alien movie, yet it is the mold on which alien flicks should be patterned; and it is more effective than any I have seen. The slower moments bore only the moviegoer whose wits have been so dulled by slasher pics and moronic sitcoms that he cannot understand the unfolding psychological drama. The at-first-confusing introduction of the veterinarian is a clever way of unfolding several key subplots. The ending is not a disappointment if the viewer has any intelligence at all. Rather, it turns Father Hess's inner conflict (and the movie's real storyline) on its head, resolving the entire film in an unexpected and greatly satisfying manner. The drama is not cheesy; if anything, cheesiness is what happens when other filmmakers try to pull off what Shyamalan has done and fail.
What else is there to say? The acting is wonderful, the scripting perfect, the sound production incomparable. The lighting and camera angles are not distracting, but they are done in such a way as to make the viewer just as confused, interested, scared, and engaged as the characters on-screen. In short, this is a rare gem, and I cannot wait to see what Shyamalan has for us in the future.