- Nate Lemann
ALIEN HORROR SUMMER - NO. 16: SIGNS (2002) MOVIE REVIEW
M. Night Shyamalan’s 2002 summer thriller is a meditation on faith, as well as being a pretty scary and intimate alien invasion thriller.
by Nate Lemann
Back in 2002, the two biggest names big-event blockbuster filmmaking were Steven Spielberg and M. Night Shyamalan, who was coming off back-to-back hits in “The Sixth Sense” and “Unbreakable”. Shyamalan showed a great command of the camera and a unique storytelling sense, becoming known as a twist filmmaker. When it was announced he was going to be tackling the phenomena of crop circles, interest was spiked very high.
His story picks up on a farm owned by Graham Hess (Mel Gibson), a former preacher who is still dealing with the loss of his beloved wife. Graham has two kids: Morgan (a precocious Rory Culkin) and Bo (a truly adorable Abigail Breslin). Graham’s brother Merrill (Joaquin Phoenix) also lives in the apartment above the garage, helping Graham and the kids adjust to their new normal (while also licking his wounds about a baseball career that went nowhere). When one morning Graham and his kids find crop circles in their cornfield, they call in the local sheriff (a really great Cherry Jones) to investigate. At first chalking it up to a hoax like older cases from the 1970s, other odd things begin taking place on the farm: the dogs get more violent, strange figures stalk the house in the night, and more signs like the ones they found are popping up across the world.
As the signs get harder to ignore, Graham and the family must reckon with what is looking like a full scale alien invasion. The way Shyamalan doles out the reveals of the ever increasing threat is masterful work and storytelling structuring. The army recruitment office and Brazil birthday party scenes are two very great examples of implied horror and still pack a shocking punch all these years later.
I can’t remember the last time Gibson was this good in a movie. The kids are also eerily calm but adorable nonetheless (love the scene where Breslin wakes up Gibson to tell him about a monster and then nonchalantly asks for a cup of water). I think this movie finds Phoenix in a very interesting period in his career: he is coming off of a tour-de-force in “Gladiator” and still deciding if he wants to be a conventional leading man or become the more idiosyncratic performer he would eventually become. I do think the early signs of stilted dialogue and acting that mid-2000s Shyamalan films would eventually be critiqued for start to rear their heads in this film (especially in comparison to his two previously flawless films). That said, Gibson and team really dig down deep when it counts and have you holding your breath in some very real, terrifyingly tense moments toward the end.
The real gem of this film is the thematic debate of what do you see when you see signs in life: do you look for meaning behind the seemingly random events of life or do you resign yourself to the chaos of the universe. Graham has lost all faith in God and a higher purpose. Loss can corrupt our very belief systems and the emotional arc of this film is how can Graham learn to believe again because in the end, it may be the only thing we can do in the face of insurmountable odds. It is the true twist of the movie; the water twist, however groan inducing, is incidental to the main crux of that final scene. It’s what Shyamalan as a mainstream director was so successful out when he started out.
FINAL RATING: 4/5 Stars (Thematically rich and expertly made alien invasion thriller)
Comentários