Signs

Released 2002
Stars Mel Gibson, Joaquin Phoenix, Rory Culkin, Abigail Breslin, Cherry Jones
Directed by M. Night Shyamalan
Reviewed August 20, 2002

MAJOR SPOILER ALERT -- Beware this review gives away everything about the movie...

I really enjoyed the first half of Signs. It's a creepy thriller that slowly builds the tension by making us wonder what's out there in the dark, much like The Blair Witch Project. I enjoyed how it quietly cranks up the suspense and toys with us. What's behind these crop circles? Are there really aliens out there? If so, are they good or bad? I expected the entire movie to be a mystery with a bunch of open questions at the end, but everything is openly resolved instead. That was surprising, but it would have been fine if there had not been a plethora of plot contrivances and logic holes in the second half of the movie. I remember the particular moment when Signs lost me, and that was when neither Graham Hess (Mel Gibson) nor Ray Reddy (M. Night Shyamalan) called anyone to report the captured alien. The entire planet is freaking out while everyone is trying to determine whether aliens are actually here or not, and these guys don't report a captured living alien. Not only doesn't he report it, but Graham doesn't even tell Merrill when he gets home. In what universe would someone do that? It was at that moment that I knew this movie was going down the tubes.

Later Signs pays homage to Night of the Living Dead as Graham and Merrill board up the doors and windows to wait out the attack. One glaring difference between between that movie and this one, however, is they used guns and weapons in Night of the Living Dead. That leads me to the biggest question in the movie--where were the guns? Americans love guns. Ok, maybe not me, but Americans in general love guns. 99.9% of rural America is stocked with enough firepower to kick Iraq's ass in a week, so where were the guns? Graham is a reverend so I can understand why he wouldn't have any in the house to begin with, but after cutting off the alien's fingers, wouldn't he have made a run to get some? If it were me, I know I would've popped over to Wal-Mart or K-Mart or Gun-Mart to pick up an arsenal, but Graham doesn't even consider it. In fact, guns are never even mentioned in the entire movie. By not addressing the issue, writer/director M. Night Shyamalan makes it stick out like a sore thumb. Maybe guns aren't prevalent in India, where Shyamalan hails from, but he's stateside now. This is the land where people are armed to the teeth because they're paranoid an attack like this will actually happen someday.

The people in this movie weren't only opposed to guns, however. Apparently, they were opposed to weapons of any kind, since no one holds one in his hands until the final scene. At one point Graham has a knife, but he uses it as a mirror. I know the issue of weapons was ignored because Shyamalan wanted the conflict to be small and personal. One of the many plot contrivances is when he has Morgan (Rory Culkin) quote from his incredibly accurate alien book about how the author expected the conflict to be hand-to-hand. This allowed Shyamalan to keep the special effects to a minimum, but plot-wise it made no sense. Even when fighting hand-to-hand, you use weapons. How asinine is it for an invading (or recon) force to come from who knows where in the universe to fight without weapons? You could argue that they had poison, but they would certainly have used more.

The final insult in the movie was the last news report where they stated the aliens were defeated by low-tech methods, but there were no more details available. Come on, they were defeated by water. No one would call the news stations to say they were beating them with low-tech methods. They'd say USE WATER! In fact, every news station would have graphics saying USE WATER! That's the key piece of information you'd want everyone to have in order to save the human race, and no one would be coy with it.

In the end, it was inevitable Graham's faith would be restored. It was as inevitable as the fact that we'd see the alien whose fingers were chopped off again. I must say I thought Shyamalan was a better writer and director than that, and I was disappointed to see him resort to a bunch of trite plot points and contrivances. The first half of the movie was so good, that it was tough to watch the second half. In fact, it was a little painful, but I must admit it remained interesting. There's a nice moment while the aliens try to break into the basement when Morgan has an asthma attack. Graham calmly talks him through it, and I could have used more moments like that. I also could have used more logic and common sense.

Reviewed by Bill Alward
August 20, 2002
Home