for those who wish to understand this film properly

Rating: Null/10 (4 April 2017)

Please Note: this is not like my usual reviews and is more of a discussion on this film and key narrative points. As a result, I will be discussing major spoilers, as this is targeted towards people who have already viewed the film.
This Movies marks the beginning of the downward spiral of M Night Shyamalan's directorial career. While the Sixth Sense and Unbreakable are cinematic greats, Signs is a mess of a film, with a plot twist so ridiculous I didn't know what to say.
For a start, you know you have a poor plot twist when your fans have to create their own theories in order to make your film seem competent. The fan theory goes that the Aliens are not aliens, but in face daemons from hell. This would explain why they don't use fancy technology, are weak to water (as it is a drastic change from their normal hot environment), and matches to religious tone the movie has built up, up until the point of the first sight of the aliens. However this is clearly not what the movie had intended. If this was the truth, then that would have been the plot twist to this film (as to be expected of all Shyamalan's works), but that is not what is stated, or ever implied by either the narrative or the characters.
Instead what we are given is an alien invasion film where the aliens are completely unprepared for what is actually on the earth. One online critic who I am a great admirer off used the found footage scene to show off how Shyamalan is a good visual story teller as you can see the alien is scared and hiding before it walks away. However, if this invasion plan of theirs was actually well thought out, it would have no need to be fearful of us. You would think, if the plan was to invade Earth, they would have brought some form of weaponry or some way to protect themselves from the water which covers most of the surface of our blue planet.
Another theory is that the reason the aliens are so unprepared for us humans is that their intension was to come in piece, and we just attacked without stopping to consider this, therefore presenting us as the villains without us realising it. However, again if this were the case, a competent film maker would make this more explicit and clearer in this message. To see a similar idea done well, please watch the original ending of I Am Legend (2007). All these fan theories do make the film seem very well made, but in reality, that's all they are; theories.
Signs is not an awful film however as it does feature a solid, creepy atmosphere, with interesting camera work (another staple of Shyamalan's features), and strong performances from its leads – well... the adult actors at least. With this film however I cannot tell whether Shyamalan directed these kids to behave how they do, or whether they are just bad little actors. The script has them speak in ways that no child (in a realistic world) ever would, and every line is monotone and expressionless: a weak method of creating a creepy tone (by making the children needlessly creepy).
Shyamalan has recently made a couple of decent movies. His last two features I have found effectively creepy and the moments of comedy in both has worked very effectively. The dialogue is the same as in all his films as it's so unnaturally written, it's almost hard to believe anybody would say the lines he right in real life. Luckily he has the money to afford great actors who can pull off these lines well enough for it to be not too distracting most of the time