Very suspenseful, actually rather scary, always interesting and never boring

Rating: Null/10 (19 July 2003)

There are always people out there complaining about faults in good and entertaining movies, faults that they are so clever to pinpoint. Do not listen to them.
Signs is actually almost a horror masterpiece. I'm not a Mel Gibson fanatic. For instance, I hated The Patriot with Gibson and I thought Shyamalan's previous movie Unbreakable was rather bad. On the other hand I loved The Sixth Sense from the same director. If you agree with me on those I'm sure you will agree that Signs is very good.
Signs has many strong points, The story is captivating from the beginning, the pacing is high and there is not a boring moment in the entire movie. The acting is also very good. Last but not least: Signs is actually a scary movie and that is not very common.
The weak points are few and minor: The unneccessary comic relief with the aluminium foil protection, the boy's a little to clever lines and perhaps a little too much sentimentality.
Rating 9/10. According to the IMDb rating system of course.
Finally a few words to all you fault-finders and joykillers out there:
SPOILER WARNING
You think you are so clever. But with sarcastic summarys like "They forgot their raincoates" and remarks about the effect of water you show that you are actually not very clever at all, not understanding that you are giving away important parts of the plot and thus ruining the movie experience for others.
One reviwer for instance makes a big deal out of the fact that it is not likely that aliens, who are intelligent enough to travel to earth, would need crop signs as guidance. Of course not. Our cities are not hard to find, glowing like giant lightbulbs, sending out lots of heat and signals etc. And of course the aliens would have some coordinate system to find their way without crop signs. But how do you know the purpose of the crop signs? I don't know. All I know is that I heard a theory in the movie that it was for coordination. But did an alien explain the purpose of the crop signs? No, thought not. Maybe you are not that clever after all? Maybe the real purpose of the crop signs have to do with the aliens culture, maybe it is their warpaintings? Or maybe it is psychological warfare? Who knows?
The same reviewer thought the ending was far fetched. But like Gibson said in the movie; there are two types of people. You are free to believe the ending was an act of god or that it was coincidence and only act of man. I thought the ending was very clever and I'm sure it is a lot more clever than something you can come up with.
Last: Is it so hard to think that an alien species who has never had any contact with water could be surprised of the effect of water on themselves?