Excellent spiritual brother to "Independence Day"

Rating: 8/10 (17 March 2003)

M. Night Shyamalan's films always impress me and have gotten better as time goes on. "The Sixth Sense" was good, but relied heavily on the ending to raise it above the normal supernatural thriller. "Unbreakable" was superb with an ending that justifies the events of the movie. "Signs" follows this trend, this time using space aliens and UFOs as the vehicle to deliver the film's message.
*Some spoilers below*
As with all Shyamalan's films, in order to accept the film the audience must accept the world view (typically a supernatural theme in a real world environment) that the narrative is putting across. Don't believe in ghosts? "The Sixth Sense" was probably a waste of time for you. Think comic books are stupid? "Unbreakable" probably won't rock your world. If you can't accept the concept of aliens arriving on Earth and making crop circles, then you probably won't enjoy "Signs".
"Signs" really reminded me of "Independence Day", shrunk to the personal level. For the ordinary man, taking on the alien hordes in a Raptor while building a computer virus on an Apple computer is inconceivable. Hiding in your basement isn't. The Hess family react in an understandable fashion when confronted with the unknown - they hide in their house. Everything is kept on the small and personal level, which makes the audience become so much more involved. Forget saving the world - Mel Gibson's character is just trying to save his family.
"Signs" also contains an atmosphere of creepy tension that is uncommon and hugely effective. Shyamalan obeys the golden rule of creature suspense - don't let the audience see the creature until the last moment. The unknown is much more fear-inducing than anything that CGI can cook up, with "Signs"' use of the unknown and half-seen being among the best I have seen on film. Revealing the alien at the end is a bit of a let down, but does give the film it's climax.
At it's heart "Signs" does contain a message about faith that is delivered in a reasonably un-preachy way. I hate having feel-good messages rammed down my throat, but "Signs" doesn't do that; the faith message is important to the characters' motivations in the film rather than a message for all of us to live by. The audience can take away what it wants.
As can be seen by other comments, "Signs" has a lot of detractors. Personally it was great to see an alien film where the US doesn't have all the answers and kicks the aliens off the planet just in time for the romantic leads to get together. Imagine - a film where some other country other than the US finds a way to repel the aliens first.

In regards to what the aliens can and can't do, or what they should or shouldn't have thought - we don't know. That's a huge part of the film - the aliens remain alien, unknown and inhuman. Who knows why they did what they did or what they could do?
"Signs" is a worthy film to the Shyamalan film catalogue - I can't wait to see what his next release is, supernatural thriller or not.