Finally, a frightening movie!

Rating: 7/10 (3 August 2002)

This has to be one of the first movies in years to realize that the less you see of the monster - the scarier the experience. Although Spielberg's 'Jaws' employed this technique so well, most films these days took the other route - showing us the evil in it's full glory instead. As a result, in these films the fear factor is lost under mountains of animatronics or cgi.

In Signs, we are kept in complete suspense for the majority of the movie - An inhuman leg here... a flitting shadow there...
Our minds do the rest for us. And it works fantastically.
Signs takes the alien invasion plotline and examines it from a whole new angle. M. Night knew that he didn't need to show us huge ufo's blowing up the white house. Instead, he stays with one small family in one small town throughout. Our only link to the outside world is the occasional tv report. Yet still you get the sense that something terrible is happening in the world outside - all over the planet. And you feel closer to the action than you ever will in event movies of the same theme. When Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix are trapped in the middle of their own house - with shadows of creatures moving past the windows looking for a way in - you are right there beside them.
Because Signs depends so much on the emotional intellect of its audience, those with little sense of imagination will probably be dissapointed with its underplayed manner. But those who can't walk past an open doorway at night without conjuring some skeletal creature in the darkness beyond will probably find it the most frightening experience they have ever had.