Signs Review by Gamepro

CAUTION: Signs is an M. Night Shyamalan film. Being such, the standard Shyamalan Warning Sticker applies: If you want to see this movie (you should, it’s brilliant), do not read this review. While I’m not gonna spoil anything major, it’s still best to enter the theater completely blindly, with no expectations aside from "This is an M. Night Shyamalan film."
So here’s your review.

The Sixth Sense was about ghosts. Or, rather, it had ghosts on its mind. Unbreakable was about superheroes. Or, rather, superheroes were used as the stepping stone for a story much more cerebral and wise. So it sorta makes sense, then, that M. Night Shyamalan’s next film is about aliens…at least on the surface, anyway. As in all his other films, there’s something buried here much deeper and far more brilliant than any trailer, TV spot, or poster tag line could ever give away.

Mel Gibson plays Graham Hess, a former preacher who has gave up on the priesthood after his wife died in a horrible car wreck. He was left with two children, two dogs, and one farm; his brother, a former minor league baseball player named Merrill, lives with the family and provides emotional support to Graham. Signs begins as Graham discovers a crop circle has been etched into his corn field; his children sense weird things in the air and in the water; local dogs begin to act horribly violent, lashing out at their loving owners.

While the movie posters lead you to believe that crop circles are the focus of Signs, the posters are (not surprisingly) misleading. Crop circles play a role for about five minutes; the rest of the film concerns itself more with issues of family, fear, wonder, and—above all—faith. After this film, it’s clear that Shyamalan’s forte isn’t just 90-minute Twilight Zone marathons, but intense, smart tales of "ordinary people caught in extraordinary circumstances." He makes movies for people who want to believe in something bigger than themselves.

I suspect anyone who loved Unbreakable will fall in love with Signs in much the same way, because the two movies share quite a lot in common; though anyone who thought Unbreakable moved too slowly will be pleased to know that this film is even more intense and taut than The Sixth Sense in terms of its pacing. While all of M. Night’s stories deal with events of great and terrifying grandeur, they do so in the most personal possible way. Much as he did with Unbreakable, Shyamalan takes a genre—superheroes in Unbreakable; alien visitors in Signs—and tears it apart from the inside out. If Unbreakable were the thinking man’s Batman, consider Signs the Nobel Lauriat’s Independence Day.

Now, to answer your question, no, this movie does not feature the "traditional" (if two is all it takes for a tradition) Shyamalan twist ending. Signs ends by throwing you for a different (and in many ways more inspired) sort of loop. I’d be doing the film a grave injustice if I gave you any hint of what it was.

So go see Signs this weekend, and steel yourself for something lasting and special, something totally un-Hollywood and 100% Shyamalan. Stick around for the credits, too…not because there’s some surprise waiting at the end, but because when the movie’s title shows up again it will smack you in the face with its brand-new meaning. M. Night Shyamalan is a super hyper movie genius, first class, a man who fully deserves to be the target of your jealousy and devotion—he gets to do what he loves, and no one can stop him. One day he will make a beautiful box set

Thanks to Gamepro for this review

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