Signs point to.... SUCK

Rating: Null/10 (2 August 2002)

Deeply disappointed I was. Forgivable this movie is not. M. Night needs to take a good long look at his previous works and ask himself what a twist/shock ending really is. This is the same man that left all the clues out in the open in both Unbreakable and Sixth Sense, but still managed to make the audiences do a double take at the end; leaving them all asking themselves why they didn't pick up on them earlier. The end of this movie is really no shock, not much of a twist, and yes, a number of major things brought up during the course of the movie were put into quick realization at the end, but there was no real climax. The facts were merely presented in the form of a flashback (typical of the director's style), and then played out in more of a "wow, okay, how fast can I get out of the theater and where did I park again?" style than a "Holy crap! I never thought about all this stuff!!! This is eerie and I have to see this again in order to grasp it properly" style. I'm not going to bad mouth this movie completely. Most of the story line was great. Up until the last 20 minutes or so, it was full of great acting, direction, a foreshadowing cameo by the director, and the occasional shock that made a person jump out of their seat, as well as some really funny moments. The ending truly spoiled the film, and I highly doubt that even Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson and Hailey Joel Osment revealing themselves as the aliens could have saved this M. Night Shyamalan piece (a piece of WHAT, I won't go into). I can't go into greater detail without spoiling the film. So here goes:
********SPOILERS*********** The aliens never fight back. This seven foot tall beast with 5 foot long arms and nasty, grimy looking claws gets the ever-loving holy bejeezus beat out of him with a Louisville Slugger and never takes a shot back at Joaquin Phoenix. He just shoots McCauly Culkin Clone version 2.2 with a really weak aerosol mist of poison gas, which doesn't act as a powerful enough agent to affect anybody else in the room, which happen to be standing only a few yards away. Glade plug-ins are more potent than that. Not a very effective way to exterminate a species in the first place. Next time, they should try sodium cyanide and sulfuric acid. The aliens are here to supposedly harvest humanity for food or whatever. They are also water-soluble. The human body is roughly 80% water, so harvesting humans surely wouldn't be done for the purpose of food. The crop circles are supposedly landmarks for the alien invasion force. You think any species that's capable of interstellar travel would be also capable of something a little less obvious than a 700-foot long crop circle for a land marker. Maybe some kind of GPS device purchased from a local sporting goods store would help; but these silly aliens didn't remember to bring their Visa cards (ha-ha! Get it? Aliens! Visa!! HA!!!). They really need a lesson in stealth and tactics. If the aliens are such weaklings, why don't their space ships have weapons at least? I know McCauly Culkin clone version 2.2 tried to explain some of this with his highly credible extra-terrestrial book, but let's face the facts: air support and artillery are powerful weapons in the arsenal of any military. These ET's need a crash course in WWI warfare. Also, Hydrogen IS the most common element in the known universe, with oxygen not too far behind, and I'll point out again that these aliens HAVE mastered interstellar travel, but they obviously have no idea of what water is or that 70% of the earth's surface is covered in it if they invade without taking any precautions against it. Maybe if they wore some kind of clothes, they would be spared such a humiliating defeat from their own kryptonite; the deadly and powerful dihydrogen monoxide. **************************
I could probably name about ten different endings that would have made this movie worth finishing, but I'm not going to tell Mr. Shyamalan how to do his job. I just home he redeems himself with something of a more worthy conclusion next time. Shame on you M. Night.