Overall Rating
  Awesome: 35.25%
Worth A Look: 21.43%
Average: 9.45%
Pretty Bad: 15.67%
Total Crap: 18.2%
13 reviews, 356 user ratings
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| Signs |
by Erik Childress
"The Signs ARE There Folks.....Shyamalan MUST GO!!!"
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He has to be stopped. That was one of the many things I said in the movie theater amongst the several expletives after being duped once again by the Master of Ding Dong Ditch, M. Night Shyalaman. His infamous three-act structure of a great setup and enormously unsatisfying payoffs is on display once again in Signs, another cinematic jerkoff from the director without the gratification. Be sure, there is certainly a mess to clean up afterwards except there are no towels in sight.An excellent Mel Gibson admittedly takes over the “Bruce Willis role” as Graham Hess, a former priest who has lost his faith that can be found in the screenwriter’s character handbook in-between the chapters on “wacky sidekick” and “hookers with a heart of gold.” Hess lost his faith not after reports of priests molesting children but when his wife was struck down (or pinned up) in an auto accident. Graham has all but isolated himself and his family in a Pennsylvania farmhouse surrounded by corn yet conspiculously contains not a trace of farming equipment.
Then one morning he wakes up and the dogs are going crazy. He ventures out into the corn with his younger brother, Merrill (Joaquin Phoenix) and two children, Morgan (Rory Culkin) and Bo (Abigail Breslin) to discover large crop circles, the kind once created by pranksters in various parts of the world. Dismissing it as well as the work of local troublemakers, Graham is persuaded by Morgan and Bo to look a little closer, especially when reports of similar phenomenon are dominating every channel on the airwaves.
The way Shyamalan conducts the slow build of suspense here is indicitive of his previous work and is far more successful. The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable had a lot of slow talking and even slower pacing that it took jolts just to wake the audience up. By using the point of view of a single family as a witness to global events, there’s a genuine sense of dread when their only outlet to the outside world (television) no longer becomes a viable ally. For nearly 90 minutes, Shyamalan has us in the palms and by the loins in fear and eager anticipation of how this likable family is going to survive the terror from above. Then...and THEN...he neglects to finish us off.
Before delving off into spoiler territory, let me simplify it this way. If Shyamalan directed Jaws, the film would be about Sheriff Brody’s fear of the water. Quint would be dead, Hooper missing, and as soon as Brody confronts the shark by lowering into the water, the Great White would swim away with its mission accomplished. What Shyamalan does to his audience is the equivalent of cinematic rape. He forces us into submission tearing off our exteriors and retreating us into the fear of our own imagination. Then, without warning, he violates us with a final act that is more for him than for us and then places the blame on us, giving us what we deserved if we don’t understand his vision.
A good writer/director can tell a story and move it along with such confidence that an audience dare not ask a question as their disbelief is suspended. A great writer/director will leave us with no such questions. A competent writer/director will not rely on the intelligence of their audience only to insult and play them for dumber than Anna Nicole Smith trying to interpret 2001: A Space Odyssey. Shyamalan does this by interrupting the flow of a key, late moment by flashbacking to knowledge we are already aware of. You can almost hear him going “SEE, remember you sheep-sucking morons! This happened before and it relates to what I’m trying to tell you! Do you SEE?!!! DO YOU?!!!” To discuss the violation at hand that is the final 15 minutes of this film, extensive spoilers will have to be revealed. Please tread with caution.
********************SPOILERS BEGIN********************
After Shyamalan has attempted to bite the remaining fingernails you have left, he settles in and moves straight on ‘til morning. Through the course of a single evening, the aliens have been repelled (by some primitive method in the Middle East.) So first we ask, THAT’S IT? All this trouble and tension and the aliens just go away because the MIDDLE EAST(?!) solved the world’s alien problems? Did they throw rocks? The coast would seem to be clear, except for that one remaining alien left in the living room! And not just any alien, but the one that Graham encountered in the pantry of the man who killed his wife. How do we know this? Because Graham chopped off its fingers. Shyamalan lets us know this by zooming into a close-up of the alien’s missing digits and then has the temerity to flashback to the PRECISE MOMENT in the film when Graham chopped them off.
OK, so I guess we’re all idiots. But then Shyamalan goes “Wait. You think you are idiots? Just wait until you see my characters here.” It’s at this point that we get the final chapter of the recurring Truffaut-like flashback involving the death of his wife. It’s a seemingly meaningless epilogue that Graham has already told his children earlier in the film, but turns out to be the impetus for our heroes to FREAKIN’ REACT!!! Call me crazy, but if there’s a nefarious alien in my living room holding my asthmatic son and ready to poison him, I don’t need to remember the dying words of my spouse to tell me to pick up a baseball bat and WHACK THE FUCKER!!!
The fans of Shyamalan make incoherent leaps of faith themselves to justify his work. You people ain’t foolin’ any of us. Don’t give me this B.S. that the aliens weren’t aliens at all, but actually demons sent straight from hell that Ex-Father Graham had to battle for his faith. If they just appeared on the farm and not the ENTIRE WORLD, I could buy into that in much the same way that I could have bought the ending of The Sixth Sense if Bruce Willis KNEW that he was dead. Otherwise, shut up. It’s a nice parallel to the belief that Gibson’s daughter IS actually some form of angel able to identify “contaminated” holy water that hurts the aliens, but its still a theory that doesn’t HOLD water. (This is Shyamalan’s second film in a row where water becomes an Achilles Heel.)
************************SPOILERS END************************
By the end of the film comes not one of Shyamalan’s big twists, but the not-so-big surprise that we’ve been duped again into watching a cocked-up sci-fi fantasy that really isn’t about what it purports to be. A tale of faith and virtues disguised as an alien invasion. Be aware of the “signs” all around us in everyday life is the message we’re left with. Not a bad proclamation, if only he didn’t make it the ridiculous equivalent of expecting amateur faith healers to see the checkmate twenty moves ahead on the chessboard. That’s just stupid! So the guy paralyzed in a hit-and-run accident should take it as a sign that he was destined never to walk again because someday he may step on an ant that may hold the key to curing all the world’s diseases? What a fitting message to the next child born with spina biffida, forced to walk around using his hands. Hopefully that kid will grow up to discover his true purpose to approach Shyamalan one day and slug him right in the crotch.
The same weekend I saw this travesty, I took it as a sign that Field of Dreams was on cable. Here’s another film, a modern masterpiece, about a family living on a farm with plowed over corn. Ray Kinsella has a variety of signs by way of a mysterious voice that he interprets and follows no matter how crazy they may seem. That was a film whose subtext sneaks up on you as a complement to your viewing experience and will only enliven future viewings. Signs' climax is an impotent affair that only clues you into everything that’s wrong with the film.If you haven’t seen the movie and had to skip the spoilers to preserve the experience, then I apologize that there wasn’t much of a review for you to read. I’d tell you to go out and immediately see the movie so you could enjoy the entirety of it, but that would be like getting yourself sodomized in prison to get a better spot in the chow line. To sum up – the film isn’t really about aliens at all, but about the signs all around us that we should pay attention to. They hold the keys to our future and to those we care about. I guess in a simplified sense, the film does get that part right, because the signs ARE all around us. Two rest on the video shelves and will soon be joined by one currently in theaters. They are the films of Shyamalan, the overrated hack dubbed with the insulting label of “the next Spielberg” by Newsweek magazine. (Just because you make a film about aliens that scramble unseen through a home playground and knock over garbage cans doesn’t mean you’ve made the next “Close Encounters” or “E.T.”) In the words of Tom the cat – “DON’T…YOU…BELIEVE IT!” – and when you stop buying into his stuff and justifying it with hidden clues that don’t exist, then this Shamalamadingdong bitch will finally be stopped. Now that’s something worth believing in.
link directly to this review at http://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=6018&reviewer=198
originally posted: 08/16/02 10:10:00
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USA
02-Aug-2002 (PG-13)
UK
N/A
Australia
15-Aug-2002
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