#60-B: SIGNS (2002)

THRILL SCALE 1-10

9

HAVE I SEEN IT BEFORE?

Yes, a few times

BEST SEQUENCE

It's gotta be the Brazilian birthday party video

BEST LINE

"Merrill, swing away." - it's not really a great line, and that whole ending really doesn't come together for me, but it's the only line that comes to mind

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE

75%

ROTTEN TOMATOES CRITICS CONSENSUS

"With Signs, Shyamalan proves once again an expert at building suspense and giving audiences the chills."

IMDB SYNOPSIS

"A widowed former reverend living with his children and brother on a Pennsylvania farm finds mysterious crop circles in their fields, which suggests something more frightening to come."

DIRECTOR

M. Night Shyamalan

MAIN CAST

Mel Gibson, Joaquin Phoenix, Rory Culkin, Abigail Breslin, Cherry Jones, M. Night Shyamalan

THOUGHTS

• The first time I saw Signs must have been shortly after it was released (although I can't remember exactly where or when), and I've seen it a few more times since then. Despite this fact, I was going into this viewing not expecting to give it such a high thrill score. However, while I remembered some of the big moments and scares, a lot of them had faded from my memory so they still got me good. The alien's hand reaching under the pantry door, the leg in the cornfield, the hand grabbing Rory Culkin in the cellar, all of these moments made me jump and then some (apparently my weakness is appendages)
• And let's not beat around the bush, let's talk about the ending. Is it stupid that the aliens are vulnerable to water? Yes. Is it even stupider that they would invade Earth, a planet with not just an abundance of water, but where this dangerous substance often falls from the sky? Of course. Is it contrived that Merrill's baseball bat hanging on the wall is such a key plot point when he could have just, say, picked up the glasses of water and thrown them at the alien? Yes, it's all pretty silly (although I feel like the first time I saw it I found the ending effective)
• In my last review I came down hard on some of Shyamalan's twist endings, saying that they diminished the impact of their respective movies, and Signs was definitely on my mind when I said that. But, while the whole water vulnerability thing did make the aliens less intimidating as a long-term threat, in my mind I kind of glossed over their scariness in the short-term. On the one hand the villains may seem less intimidating if they can be taken down with a Super Soaker, but if you don't know this fact and the aliens mean to cause you immediate harm, it's still pretty scary for the characters involved, and that's what led Signs to be more heart-pounding than I remembered
• It's a pretty potent idea for a horror movie, the small-scale alien invasion concept focused on one family in a farmhouse, so it surprised me that I couldn't really think of any other movies quite like this aside from some parts of Close Encounters of the Third Kind (movie #31 on the AFI list). War of the Worlds and parts of Independence Day also, perhaps, but I haven't seen any film version of War of the Worlds so I can't speak from experience
• I thought Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix were pretty good here as (just like Bruce Willis) they managed to make the dialogue sound a little more natural than written. The kids, played by Rory Culkin and Abigail Breslin, didn't fare quite so well with their lines, but I think that's more on Shyamalan's writing/directing than the performances. Also worth shouting out that this was Breslin's first movie, and she must have been around 5 years old when it was filmed
• So, Signs, I can admit when I was a little premature with my judgments. I think your ending is pretty dumb, but in hindsight you've still got some good thrills in you that aren't as negatively impacted by the ending as I would have thought. Before we go, is there anyone out there who wants to make a case for the ending's effectiveness being greater than my assessment?

Up next: Unbreakable, from 2000