M. Night Shyamalan's annoying direction style actually works here!

Rating: 9/10 (18 June 2008)

Mr. Shyamalan has made three good movies in my opinion (The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and Signs), which happen to be his three consecutive drama/thrillers. Shyamalan's most recent films may have some good qualities to them, but they aren't exceptional in any way because of his poor and repetitive direction. In Signs, he got lucky that his direction of the actors happened to work. In every one of his movies, he has the actors at moment of "extreme drama" whisper to each other, no matter where they are, and it's a strange and usually ineffective technique. Here, for some reason it worked...probably because Mel Gibson is a good enough actor to actually convey the drama that was meant to be shown in the scenes. Shyamalan also does this annoying thing where he has a character ask another character something and they look away and give a belated answer of a nod or a small head shake. These techniques don't seem that bad, but when every movie he makes has the same character direction, you wonder how diverse or good of a director this person actually is. Luckily, any of his techniques were lost among the powerful script, enthralling story and overall real drama that this movie has.
Alien crop circles are appearing various places all over the world. One of them is on the Hess's farm. Graham Hess (Mel Gibson) is an ex-priest who lost his faith after his wife was killed in a car accident. Also living on the farm are his brother Merrill (Joaquin Phoenix) and his two kids Bo (Abigail Breslin) and Morgan (Rory Culkin). Aliens start appearing on the farm, never actually visible, usually hiding in the cornfields, and Graham feels he must board up the house. Drama and some pretty tense and suspenseful scenes ensue.
M. Night Shyamalan's screenplays seem to try to be deep, and this movie actually felt sort of deep. Not to give away any spoilers, but signs can be found in many ways, not just in the crop fields. The movie is funny when it's trying to be, and sad when it's trying to be, and even at times it sent a chill down my spine from some of the scares thrown in, and they aren't just the typical jump scares. The characters are likable and pretty easy to connect with as real people. It can be slow at times, which is true with any of the director's (I'm tired of writing out his last name) movies, but most of the slow scenes added to character development. Up to this point M. Night was known for his surprising twist endings, and the ending is sort of a twist here, but it was also just a great ending.
I've come to realise that M.N.S. is not as great a writer or director as he was once touted, but he still has made some really good movies, and this was a wonderful one. Please Mr. Shyamalan, come out of your stage of mediocrity and come up with another great movie like this one!
My rating: *** 1/2 out of ****. 110 mins. PG-13 for terror and language.