Signs
For decades strange, intricate symbols have appeared pressed into farm fields across the globe. Enormous, puzzling messages from an extraterrestrial civilization--or an incredibly elaborate hoax staged by...whom? Those are the questions that drive M. Night Shyamalan's narrative, but as in the director's other thrillers (The Sixth Sense,Unbreakable), the answers aren't always where you expect them. As he's done for Shyamalan's previous films, composerJames Newton Howardcreates a musical undercurrent of mystery and unease, with nervous arpeggios and sullen, swelling strings ratcheting up throughout the score's unsettling first half. The film is dotted with apparent visual homages to past sci-fi films, and moments of Howard's orchestral score have occasional parallels with the more action-oriented passages of John Williams's landmarkClose Encountersscore. But there's more than brooding atmospherics, tension-building, and the occasional booming crescendo here. A sense of gentle spirituality gradually evolves as well (largely via the composer's sensitive use of minimalist techniques), with Howard's music ultimately achieving a quiet, satisfying sense of resolve that's missing from all too much of Hollywood's hollow dramatic thunder.--Jerry McCulley