Signs
Screenplay : M. Night Shyamalan
MPAA Rating : PG-13
Year of Release : 2002
Stars : Mel Gibson (Graham Hess), Joaquin Phoenix (Merrill Hess), Rory Culkin (Morgan Hess), Abigail Breslin (Bo Hess), Cherry Jones (Officer Caroline Paski), Patricia Kalember (Colleen Hess)
Like the best science fiction, M. Night Shyamalan's Signs is about something other than what its plot is about. Taking the familiar sci-fi trope of the massive alien invasion--one character even says bluntly, "It's just like War of the Worlds"--Shyamalan crafts an intimate portrait of a scarred family pulling together under stress and also makes a strong case for the importance of faith. Signs can be seen as an argument for the existence of God, which I believe it is, but it can also be seen as a more general argument for a cosmic order, that things are as they are for a reason, not simply because of chance.
Of course, as Shyamalan has risen to the top ranks of Hollywood by writing and directing highly structured thrillers like The Sixth Sense (1999) and Unbreakable (2000), movies in which every detail matters, it is not surprising that he would use his talents to argue for order in the universe. Signs is a carefully structured exercise in the accumulation of details that leads to a climactic revelation, although those expecting a Sixth Sense-style twist will invariably be disappointed. This is probably for the best, though, as Shyamalan's future success as a filmmaker rests on his ability to get out from under those kinds of audience expectations and tell the stories he wants to tell without feeling the need to twist every ending just so.
The majority of the movie takes place on a farm in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, about 45 miles outside of Philadelphia. Mel Gibson stars as Graham Hess, a father of two young children, 12-year-old Morgan (Rory Culkin, who was so good in You Can Count On Me) and 5-year-old Bo (newcomer Abigail Breslin). Graham's wife was killed six months earlier, and as a result he lost his faith in God, renouncing his position as an Episcopalian minister. This is not stated up front, but slowly becomes clear through small bits of information. We see the a cross-shaped bit of unfaded wallpaper in his bedroom where a crucifix used to hang, and he gently reminds several people to please not call him "Father." Also living with them is Graham's younger brother, Merrill (Joaquin Phoenix), a failed minor leagues baseball player who now works at a gas station and seems to have no aim in life.
The movie's plot starts from the opening scene, when the Hess family discovers that, in one of their corn fields, someone (or something) has made a huge geometric design of flattened corn stalks the size of a football field. They call on the local sheriff (Cherry Jones), hoping that it is just a prank played by local hoods, but no such luck. Soon, the TV news is filled with reports of crop circles appearing all over the world, followed by stories about mysterious lights hovering over Mexico City and then other major cities. As Shyamalan's camera never leaves Buck County, all of the information we get about what is happening in the world is what the Hess family sees on CNN. And, as we imagine it might be in real life, the news is confused, fragmented, sometimes seemingly contradictory, but always terrifying and always there.
Prior to the revelation about the global scope of the extraterrestrial presence, Shyamalan constructs several creepy sequences in which various family members "see things." There is a constant dread of something being out there, either in the corn fields or lurking around the back side of the house or, in one scene that's so scary it's almost funny, locked inside someone's pantry. Shyamalan is an expert at generating thrills and goosebumps by withholding information. He is a master of suggestion, and he uses everything at his disposal--sound, camera angles, a character's facial expression--to constantly creep you out without ever showing you what's so creepy. It's the possibility that something creepy is out there that is so much worse than the thing itself.
The story keeps winding tighter and tighter, as Shyamalan eventually brings the Hess family to the point of desperation in which they must lock themselves inside the house, boarding up all the windows and eventually finding themselves trapped in that old standby, the dark basement. There are more than a few echoes of George A. Romero's low-budget masterpiece Night of the Living Dead (1968) here (as well as in the movie's ability to suggest a potential worldwide apocalypse while never leaving its focus on a microcosm), although Shyamalan's thematic intent is exactly the opposite of Romero's: Rather than showing how the family will literally eat itself in times of stress, Shyamalan shows how it will pull together to survive.
Again, all of this is the plot of the movie, which is certainly thrilling and moving. But, underneath it all Shyamalan is working to make a point about his view of the universe and the order within it. As a Hollywood summer movie, Signs is anything but subtle in its message. At one point, Graham and Merrill have a discussion late at night about how there are two kinds of people in the world, those who sees miracles and those who see chance occurrences, which pretty much sums up what the movie is about. Shyamalan's script gives this scene a naturalness that helps the message go down easier, although I wish he hadn't felt the urge to flash back to it at a crucial moment, as if he didn't trust that the audience would remember it and its significance.
Still, even if its thematic material could have been spread a little thinner, Signs is an impressive work by a committed filmmaker, certainly one of the most skilled storytellers to emerge in the last decade. Shyamalan continues to impress with his subtle visual approach to flashy genres (having now worked in horror, fantasy, and science fiction), proving that less is very often more, especially when it comes to making the hairs rise on the back of your neck. That he does this and manages to impart a meaningful message, as well, one that even those without faith can find, at the very least, engaging, makes his work that much better.
Copyright © 2002 James Kendrick