Space Oddity

Rating: 1/10 (22 February 2003)

(Caution: spoilers)
In 'Signs" writer/producer/director M. Shyamalan attempts to merge Hitchcock and H.G. Wells into a spine-tingling story about a extraterrestrial invasion of earth, as experienced by a Pennsylvania farm family. The pre-release Hollywood hype about alien-carved 'crop circles' (as so well documented in supermarket tabloids) tries to make the film more relevant and spooky than previous 'monster space invaders' flicks.
Despite all this hype and Mel Gibson's acting, this insipid film flops miserably. How did Gibson ever fall into this black hole of a screenplay? 'Signs' serves-up an embarrassingly numbskull science fiction yarn and pretty anemic horror. It's mostly a lot noises and shadows, and those pesky crop circles just sitting there, but little else. The film's fleeting glimpses of the 'jolly-green' alien fleeting around the farm like Bigfoot, is about as scary as a kid putting on a white sheet and yelling 'boo.'
There have been so many space monster and horror creature films, Shyamalan can't help but copy elements from everything from 'Poltergeist' to 'The Thing.' But the story line just keeps heaping absurdities upon absurdities. For example, any real farmer would get his pitchfork and shotgun and go hunting for any aliens lurking around his farm and flattening his corn (as in the hilarious vignette in 'Back to the Future' when Michael J. Fox first makes a crash landing in 1955). Instead, Gibson and brother played by Joaquin Phoenix just whine about the end-of-the-world coming. They then board-up the house, just like in 'Night of The Living Dead.' In that cult classic film there are dozens of seemingly indestructible wicked zombies.
But in 'Signs' all we finally get to see is ONE clumsy alien, who must have gotten sidetracked from the invasion force. He turns out to be the first movie character since the 1939 Wizard of Oz's wicked witch to be killed by water! Now, think about this. The alien invaders are smart enough to travel countless light-years across space but don't realize earth is the only 'water planet' in the solar system. Duuuh! What's more, any middle school student who has ever done a research paper on astrobiology will tell you: no water = no life, even if it has three eyes, three toes and is polka-dot. Artistic license aside, this idiotic premise sets back science literacy by 20 years.
Shyamalan should go find his boyhood 8mm movie camera and go back to making student films until he gets in right. A copycat film that is as dumb and uninspired and this deserves an 'F'. It is such a drawn-out bore, even the gang on 'Mystery Science Theater 2000' would have trouble staying awake to mock it.