SPOILERS. this is for the people who have already seen the movie

Rating: Null/10 (4 August 2002)

This is a review intended for the people who have already seen M. Night Shaylamans's SIGNS. If you haven't seen this film, I urge you to go out and see it. And don't continue reading this review as it will ruin the movie for you starting in the third sentence, and throughout.
Signs is a somewhat misleading movie, meaning I went in expecting one thing and came out still digesting something completely different. At first I didn't like what I saw. I was perplexed and dissapointed in the scene in which the straggler Alien attacks the family, and I was pretty angry about the whole Christianity message that I got out the conclusion. "Did someone save me?" "Yeah, I think someone did." Retch. Vomit. Chunks. Then I looked a little harder and realized that M. Night was trying to appeal to the two different kinds of viewing audiences. The ones that he talks about in the film. Atheists and Faithfuls. Non-believers and believers in a higher power called God. However, even if the ending was a little offputting, it did not ruin the entire film for me. However, I pretty much paid 8.50 to go see a sci-fi movie with a wicked and hopefully disturbing twist at the end. There was no twist. There was only...I don't know, a cheap self realization that the movie seemed to take on at the very end that encouraged the viewer to look at it as a specimen instead of experience it as a story. I don't really feel like trekking through the entire film again just to find all the SIGNS that M. Night slipped in there for the geeks. If for any reason I was to watch the film a second time, it would be for the performances of the actors, and the quirky dark humour that makes the film so enjoyable. The movie theatre was packed when I went to see this film opening day, and I was surprised at how much laughter resonated through the dark, air conditioned temple of celluloid. No really, I mean everyone laughed real hard during the intentionally funny parts, but there was louder laughter during the unintentionally funny parts. At least I think they were unintentional. I look at reviews written by some of the SMART, SMART reviewers and cinema buffs at Ainticoolnews.com, and I hear them writing about how much the Brazillian Birthday scene shook them and frightened them. I even remember one reviewer drawing a comparison to 9\11 footage and how Phoenix's reaction reminded him of his own. However, in the theatre, when that blurry green figure lurches onto the television screen and the soundtrack drops a painfully intentional LOUD ORCHESTRA CLUSTER OF NOISE THAT IS ENGINEERED TO MAKE YOU JUMP the entire room was filled with hysterical laughter. Strange, was it really supposed to be that funny? I thought it was. Mel Gibson is good here, real good. He's funny, sad, and shows great emotions. Those ticks of sadness that burst onto his face when the bi-section of his wife really hits home (when he is talking to M. Night and the man apologizes to him, at the dinner table near the end of the film) I really felt for his character. Rory Culkin. I like him much more than young Macauly, he's much more mature, probabley because he was bred to make those parents more money and has been in acting camp since he popped out the womb. The little girl who plays Bo is horribley adorable, but not in an annoying way in the least bit she handled the subject matter amazingly and delivered her lines better than Rory. She is genuinely sweet. Phoenix blisters with talent, nearly stealing the entire show. Everyone else is pretty much cardboard, including the director who I wasn't too impressed with as an actor, but he wrote a great punchline for himself. A friend joked that M. Night had actually captured an alien in his cabinet and decided to write a movie about it. Perhaps...he's a strange guy. You can just sort of tell. So overall, even though it didn't follow the twist ending formula to a T the way Unbreakable did...it was still good. The ending was marred by the religious message that I GUESS can be interpreted as a string of coincidence(if you're going to be that NAIVE, Signs seems to scream) but the dark humour and general creepiness of most of the first half (except for the unintentionally halarious moments where Shaylaman takes himself a bit too seriously) and worth seeing in a theatre above all other places. Chirp. Whirr. Roar. Goodbye.