Signs Review
by Christian Pyle (Tlcclp AT aol DOT com)February 1st, 2003
Signs
Reviewed by Christian Pyle
Written and Directed by M. Night Shyamalan
Starring Mel Gibson, Joaquin Phoenix, Cherry Jones, Rory Culkin, Abigail Breslin
Grade: A
On July 4, 2002, the Fox Network showed "Independence Day." This surprised and saddened me. Less than a year earlier, we saw skyscrapers fall while newscasters chanted without a trace of irony, "It's just like ‘Independence Day.'" I would think we would all be ashamed that we ever watched buildings shatter and fireballs roll down city streets and said, "Cool!"
"Signs," the latest film from M. Night Shyamalan, the director of "The Sixth Sense" and "Unbreakable," seems a post-9/11 rewrite of "Independence Day," even though "Signs" was likely in the works before the terrorist attacks. In "Signs," an alien invasion is seen through the eyes of a family living on a farm in Pennsylvania. Graham Hess (Mel Gibson) is a farmer and former minister; he left the church after his wife died in an accident. One day he awakes to find his children missing. Searching the farm frantically, Graham discovers his son and daughter standing at the edge of an immense circle "drawn" in his corn crop, the stalks flattened as if by a powerful force. His son Morgan (Rory Culkin, the last of his brood) says simply, "I think God did it."
As it turns out, aliens did it, but God is very much a concern of this film. The growing alien threat is a catalyst for Graham to reexamine his relationship with the Almighty. After his wife's death, Graham lost his faith and retreated from his former flock, some of whom still seek his guidance whenever he comes into town. Even as the earth is invaded by aliens, the real drama concerns the existence of a divine plan. The message of "Signs" is laid out by Graham when he explains that there are two kinds of people: those who believe that everything that happens is part of a plan and those who don't. In order for Graham to accept God, he will have to accept that his wife's death was part of a larger design. The film's climax seems to give him an answer to his questions, but it's really a "lady or the tiger" type of resolution that asks the audience to decide whether a divine plan exists.
The aliens remain faceless and hostile, more mysterious than the aliens in "Independence Day" but no less inhuman. However, here the aliens are what Alfred Hitchcock called a "McGuffin," a plot device that concerns the characters but not the audience. While "Independence Day" reveled in xenophobic and pyrotechnic excesses, "Signs" focuses attention on the essentials in life -- family, faith, community -- and does so without preaching.
Shyamalan can creep out an audience more effectively than any director working today. Although none of his films are "horror films," "The Sixth Sense," "Unbreakable," and "Signs" share a shadowy aesthetic focused on a rising sense of dread. As a result, they're much creepier than the majority of "scary movies." Another Shyamalan trademark is that he takes on an overworked genre and transforms it beyond recognition. In these three films he's tackled the ghost story, the superhero, and the alien invasion, and approached them like no filmmaker ever has before.
© 2003 Christian L. Pyle
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