Good movie, bad ending.

Rating: Null/10 (4 August 2002)

Good movie, yeah. Great movie, nah. As with all Shyamalan movies, the resolve comes far too late in the movie. Its literally in the last 2 minutes of it. He drags the movie out (he also did this with Sixth Sense and Unbreakable) to the point where you need a BIG finish, and he doesnt come through. It seems as if Shyamalan tries to put a 4 hour movie into an hour and a half/2 hour time frame. Sort of like he is going along at the 4 hour pace, and then just throws the ending on at the 2 hour point. The setup in Signs called for a big finale, and his subtle use of seeing the aliens didnt supply the finale. This wasnt a subtle movie(nothing was subtle about it, the humor, the obvious story of faith, nothing)and it didnt have that 'Blair Witch' quality to it that called for not seeing the Aliens. I can understand making the suspense last as long as possible, but he goes too far with it. Now the suspense was also a good point of the movie. It held onto you up until the last 2 minutes. At times youre waiting for something to happen, and it builds it up, and then instead of blowing up, its just gone. I can only hope for his sake that Shyamalan can get out of this formula (Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs are all basically the same movie if you break it down to a visceral level), and do something different with his next movie. The entertainment world is hyping him up so far that he has a big image to live up to at this point. Good movie, not a great one. 6/10
POSSIBLE SPOILER BELOW
One thing I noticed that kind of stuck with me. For aliens that sound like a tandem dump truck loaded with TNT driving through a nitro glycerine plant, that last alien snuck in awfully quietly.