I missed Signs when it came out in the cinemas, and never got around to watching it on DVD until last night. I was very impressed. Shyamalan’s direction is stylish, tight and perfectly matching the suspenseful storyline. With creative camerawork he manages to convey the ordinaryness of the home life while infusing the whole thing with a sense of the supernatural. He clearly owes a great deal to Hitchcock and Spielberg…the wheeling flock of birds, the children’s swing set with a swing moving eerily. These allusions to The Birds and E.T. are just two examples.
What I also enjoyed about the film was the excellent script and superb acting. The scenes with the children were especially well written. Both children were believable–not the cardboard cutout kids you see in so many scary movies, but likable, eccentric, children who have been wounded by tragedy and are trying to survive. Gibson’s scenes with them are some of the most natural and best portrayals of fatherhood on film I’ve seen.
The film has been criticized for being a bit heavy handed with the inner meaning. I don’t think it was. It’s true there are a couple of ‘meaningful conversations’, but they’re done from a standpoint of Hess’ (Gibson’s) doubt as an Episcopal priest who has lost his faith, not from a preachy point of view. When the plot points resolve in the final scene to support faith and the fact that ‘there are no coincidences’ the meaning comes through clearly, but not with a punch on the nose.
What else did I like? The monsters looked demonic. The fact that they were defeated in the way they were by a ‘primitive solution discovered in the Middle East’ was a nice theological point. I’ve always contended that there are definitely such things as ‘extra terrestrials’. They don’t live on other planets. They live in another dimension. They’re what we’ve always called angels and demons. That they’re visible in the film only makes the film even more of a morality tale for our age. It’s interesting to see this handled with a strong spiritual subtext, and no better actor to take it on than Gibson.
I had a horrendous experience watching that movie in the cinema. The projector operator must have been new because he got the projection wrong and we could see the mikes hanging above the actors heads. When I first saw a microphone above Mel’s head, I thought it was going to eat him. Took us a while to realize the screwup in the projection which totally ruined this movie for me.Perhaps I’ll get the DVD and give it another look. The door scene in the basement was creepy though.
I thought it was OK, perhaps a renter. I simply wasn’t that entertained I guess. But I can see your cinematic points.
To amplify one of your comments, I liked the relationship between parent & children. Kids, though still in the process of becoming mature people, even at a young age are engaging, have quick minds, grasp big ideas, and in general can hold up their end of a conversation with an adult.This was not something I really understood until I was a parent. I imagine that Gibson consciously intended to show this in the movie.Now that I refect on it, taking children seriously is on display in The Patriot as well.
Yes, I saw this one in the theatre and it sufficiently creeped the heck out of me, particularly the part when Gibson sees the leg walking away in the cornfield. Eek.The actual homeliness of the film, of its setting and so forth, also struck me when I first saw it; the way he was able to do so much, starting from the very unremarkable first shot through the window into the yard.I also thought it wasn’t that heavy-handed. The film is essentially a kind of “morality tale”, based more on classic children’s tales than sci-fi/horror alien films. Notice the part where Shyamalan, as the actor in the film, has one of the ‘aliens’ locked up in his pantry. Reference to the prominence of the pantry in various (and goblins’ attraction thereof) children’s tales?Unfortunately this film also marks the point at which Shyamalan started going to seed. I hope he comes back.I very much agree with your take on ‘aliens’. They are demons. Period. When people see UFO’s they are seeing the deception of the “principalities of the air”. Read the reports of people who undergo horrific paralysis on being visited by ‘aliens’. There are over 300 cases involving people who were able to put an immediate halt to their abduction by calling on the name of Jesus.
I love this movie. My husband and I stayed through a second show when we saw it at the theater. I agree with Niggle that it is essentially a morality play — some people don’t like it because they expect it to be an aliens from outer space tale, when it is actually a different sort of tale that uses aliens from outer spaces as a device. Ditto with the ending — some people think that the huge amount of “coincidences” that all turn out to have a purpose is a cheap device. I think it’s an exciting comment on life.Some of the dialog is stilted. I thought both children were kind of strange the first few times I saw it. It was only on the third or fourth time that I realized, when you could hear the children laughing and playing at the end, that they were SUPPOSED to be a little strange. They were grieving and not their normal selves. You don’t get to see them being normal kids, you just know that they do go back to a normal life.Shyamalan’s big scene in this movie is the only bad scene. He is not an actor and shouldn’t have put himself in the movie, IMHO.
I really liked and always recommend “Signs”. I let my kids watch it (the older ones) because it was creepy and awesome without being vulgar. I actually didn’t mind the scene with the director in it. It was kind of fun to “find” him in the movie (a la Stephen King…another tribute to a creepy genius). It really is one of my favorite films of that kind of intrigue drama (borderline horror) genre.”Lady in the Water” was very good too. I could let the older ones watch that one, as well. It got pretty panned by the critics but I saw that it really was pretty good and I liked the direction it went. I like the idea of a man being the protector and that was a good theme in both of these movies.
“Signs” is my favorite Shyamalan film, no doubt about it. The quiet way the horror invades their lives, the horror of recovering from terrible loss, the unity of the family and the understanding betrween them even when dad goes a bit crazed. The final fade away into healing and restoration of faith makes this a movie that I watch whenever I channel-hop into it. It never matters what part of the movie it is in. I’m there.
Would you mind paying a visit to new blogger Gerry please Fr?http://filmreview08.blogspot.com/
Fine piece at InsideCatholic.com on the “Fall of the Wall” – I have some thoughts today on the Feast of St. Edward the Confessor re: the current crisis.
A ‘primitive solution discovered in the Middle East’. What exactly does this reference? It was not at all clear to me when I saw the movie, and searching the net produced no answers. Does anyone know?
I thought the ‘primitive solution in the Middle East’ was an oblique reference to baptism and exorcism.
Adding a twist to Peter’s statement that “baptism now saves us.” I wondered that baptism might be it, just couldn’t understand why it was so veiled in a movie with a minister as a main character.
My husband always teases me about that movie when I am pregnant because I crave water and leave lots of half full glasses around the house.
I love Signs. I bought it just a few weeks ago. Really well made movie. I also like Unbreakable. A lot of people didn’t but who knows.The water issue, I wondered if it was a tip of the hat to holy water’s effect on vampires.
“SIGNS” is a wonderful little SCI-FI story about faith,hope and love, esp. family love. It is among my all time favorites with THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, FORBIDDEN PLANET, STWOK, and a few others. As a sci-fi/fantasy nut, I look forward to these ‘Oasis in the Desert’ of movies. A couple of years ago a Christian film came out called “UNIDENTIFIED”. Very promising, but as with most Christian attempts at taking on a serious subject, they screwed it up! “SIGNS” does a much better job without being blatantly ‘Christian’, ‘religious’, ‘spiritual’ or HOKEY. I thought of the ‘Holy Water’ aspects myself but notBaptism per se. I can see the Exercism aspect now as well. What the real story is may only beknown to M Night S. himself. Well, interesting post Father, thank you.