Stylish slice of pulp scifi marred slightly by dishonest, but heartfelt, evangelism

Rating: Null/10 (14 January 2011)

In UFO lore, there's a famous case called the Kelly-Hopkinsville Encounter. The incident, which occurred in 1955 and featured numerous witnesses, involved a family farmhouse being menaced by strange lights and inhuman creatures. The incident went on to have a profound effect on UFO lore, and today even septics take the case seriously.
While UFO and "invasion movies" were common before 1955 – most notably the 1953 classic, "Invaders From Mars" - the Kelly-Hopkinsville Encounter helped set in stone the mythology and iconography of future UFO lore. This was a budding folklore defined by isolated farm houses, pick-up trucks, rural folk, spooked dogs, strange lights, bug eyed creatures, dead cattle, odd radar reports, disappearing planes, government conspiracies, men in black, stopped clocks, magnetic disturbances and CIA cover-ups. With the UFO boom of the 80s, spurred by "academics" like Budd Hopkins and Whitley Strieber, came even more motifs added to the mythology: nose bleeds, traumatic abductions, sexual experiments, hypnosis, implants, memory wipes, human clones, poisonous spray, alien impregnation, alien hybrids and tales of whole generations of families being abducted. Aliens were no longer bogeymen, but intergalactic rapists.
In the mid 90s, the "X Files" TV series pulled together 60 years worth of UFO mythology, but by the time the series ended, the entire UFO phenomenon was dead and the series, which once promised that "the truth was out there" and that "we all want to believe", itself no longer believed. This reflected a profound cultural change. Man had probed inner and outer space and found nothing. Wonder, imagination and mystery were dead, scientific knowledge, the hyper-connectedness of the network society and the logic of late capitalism, all with their emphasis on order and consistency, confiscating our minds and assassinating our hearts. "Surprise" became redefined as "limited knowledge"; something that could swiftly be rectified.
This impasse was predicted by philosophers decades ago. Today, in a way, it's epitomised by Gaspar Noe's "Enter The Void", a systematic reversal of Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey". While Kubrick's film is structured around a series of violent, but ultimately hopeful rebirths, Noe's film journeys through time and space and finds only intoxication, hedonism, drugs, sex and masturbation. Here, man has forgotten about outer space and instead turned hopelessly inwards, until, in a parody of the birth of Kubrick's star child, Noe ends his film with an ejaculating penis and a baby being graphically born...before the whole ugly cycle starts again. Where Kubrick gave us Nietzsche's triumphant Übermensch, Noe captures the complete decimation of spirituality and hope; the apathy of Nietzsche's Last Man.
So the UFO genre and faith, and by extension spirituality, go hand in hand, and with the collapse of one came the collapse of the other. Indeed, look closer, and many "alien films" are really about spirituality and religion. The 1950s in particular were rife with alien B movies which functioned more as Christian message movies and even the big budget stuff that came later dealt heavily with spirituality. George Pal's "War of the Worlds", for example, was one big Christian love letter, Kubrick's "2001" saw man reaching out for Godhood in the face of Godlessness, Tarkovsky's scifi flicks (not strictly UFO movies) were all about the sublime divine, Spielberg's "Close Encounters" exalted Hollywood special effects as the West's new Deity (it was originally written by Jesus-boy Paul Schrader as a Catholic rites of passage) and even the recent "Knowing" is a thinly disguised Christian allegory.
What does all of this have to do with director M. Night Shyamalan "Signs"? Firstly, "Signs" is a modern reinterpretation of the Kelly-Hopkinsville Encounter, an incident which influenced numerous Spielberg films ("Gremlins", "Poltegeist", "Close Encounters", "ET", "War of The Worlds") and paranormal home invasion movies ( "McPearson Tapes" etc).
Secondly, "Signs", with its cornfields, tractors, small town sheriffs and farms, is making a conscious effort to not only tap into 1950s UFO iconography, but the genre's early optimism and spiritual hope. Here, actor Mel Gibson plays a priest who has lost his faith and blames God for both the death of his wife and an alien invasion. Gradually, however, Gibson begins to see the "signs" all around him, and realises that all is not chaos, coincidence and violence but predestined and intricately set up by the hands of God.
Shyamalan went to Catholic school and Mel Gibson is a psycho Catholic, so the film is unashamedly religious, Shyamalan ending with a shot of a cross, inserting symbolic holy water and much talk of "Middle Eastern countries" - the cradle of Christianity - "repelling the invaders with ancient methods".
Shyamalan's first two films ("Praying with Anger" and "Wide Awake") were themselves about young kids trying to find God, and the rest of his filmography likewise deals with issues of faith and religion. What makes his preaching palatable is the way Shyamalan adopts the religious minimalism of directors like Bresson and Dreyer. Shyamalan may make popcorn flicks, but his films have a solemnity which bely their pulpy, "Twilight Zone" origins.
Aesthetically, "Signs" is great. Every scene is emphatically slow, Shyamalan's actors speaking with the hushed whispers of Medieval monks. Likewise, his script unfolds deliberately, his camera is intelligent, his Hitchcock inspired score moving and his rejection of SFX refreshing. "Signs" also contains some memorable scenes, like a brilliant "asthma attack" and a climax that is epic despite its small scale. Like Leone and De Palma, he's good at stretching simple sequences out to operatic lengths.
The film's message is problematic. On the plus side, it favours a personal or spiritual victory over agitprop populist triumph. On the negative side, Shyamalan is a charlatan and the miracles of "Signs" are tricks carefully placed by a scheming directorial God. The idea that a non-religious parent could be a good parent is outside this movie's purview and Shyamalan is oblivious to the fact that his God is vengeful and torments those who reject him.
8.5/10 – Bad message, good ambiance.