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 . Night Shyamalan's new movie, "Signs," is about
an invasion of Earth by aliens. Or at least that's what the movie's ads would
have you believe. It's actually about a fallen holy man (Mel Gibson), his failed
baseball player brother (Joaquin Phoenix), and his children – the precocious
and paranoid Bo (Abigail Breslin) and Rory Culkin as the pre-teen son who has
lost faith in his father. "Signs" is about the lost and eventual
relocation of said lost faith. So in that respect, if you went into
"Signs" looking for a good ol fashion Us Versus Aliens flick, you'll
be disappointed, as I was.
Like Shyamalan's last movie "Unbreakable,"
"Signs" is a slow-moving film that uses a genre device (re: an alien
invasion) to delve into its real intentions. The whole
aliens-are-invading-let's-run angle is just not that important to
writer/director Shyamalan, who uses the backdrop of the gradual alien invasion
as nothing more than an excuse to talk about Mel Gibson's fallen reverend,
Graham Hess, and his eventual return to faith – a return to acceptance that
will win over his family and brother, but only after he wins himself back first.
Okay, gotcha. Now what about the whole alien thing?
As mentioned, Shyamalan is either not all that interested
in making a genre film about invading aliens ala "Independence
Day" or he simply lost interest along the way. The film opens well
enough, with Hess 6 months after the death of his wife and the lost of his faith
(not to mention the surrendering of his position as the town reverend),
discovering crop circles in his backyard. Soon, the whole world is experiencing
the same phenomena. And not long after that, invisible UFOs are appearing over
locations where crop circles have recently appeared.
Merrill, Graham's brother, thinks the crop circles might be
navigational symbols for the aliens to navigate by, a sort of code word you can
see from space. Of course, no one tells ex-jock Merrill that if the aliens had
invented intergalactic travel than they could probably communicate
without having to resort to cutting patterns into some farmer's fields! Then
again, Shyamalan put so little thought into the whole alien invasion background
that it's not worth mentioning all the other gaping plot holes.
As a diehard sci-fi fan, I was disappointed with
"Signs" and its crude (and dare I say it, simplistic) interpretations
of the whole UFO and alien mythos. Did Shyamalan do what Rory Culkin's character
did and buy a book about aliens and decided this would make a groovy film? I
suppose so, because there is so little heart put into the film's alien plot that
the film threatened, on more than one occasion, to wander into absurd territory.
It doesn't help that the aliens, when they're finally revealed in their full
glory, looks like something you could get out of a costume shop. In a word,
they're cheap.
Mind you, I wouldn't keep harping on how badly the whole
alien invasion angle is executed, except the film's ads sold "Signs"
to me as a sci-fi film. I was lied to, and I didn't appreciate it. Worst,
although the film's questions about the pursuit of lost faith were interesting,
it just didn't seem all that proper in the context of the film's alien plot. And
did I mention how awful the TV and radio broadcasts in the film were done? Isn't
it just great how the TV anchors and radio disk jockeys always pause whenever
the actors start speaking, only to talk again and deliver some other interesting
news when the actors stop talking? How convenient.
By now it probably seems as if I didn't appreciate the
film. That would be false, because I did enjoy myself. There is a lot of humor
in the film, mostly involving Morgan and Merrill (Joaquin Phoenix, "Gladiator"),
and foiled hats. The acting is superb across the board, and the film uses very
few characters, thus invoking a claustrophobic feel as the Hess family
barricades themselves into their home against the impending invasion. Gibson has
the man-who-has-lost-his-faith role down pat, but besides not packing a .45,
Gibson's Graham is just an older (and less suicidal) version of his Martin Riggs
from "Lethal
Weapon".
"Signs" is not all that different from Shyamaln's
breakthrough film, "Sixth
Sense." Shyamalan writes and directs with
the same style, it's just that his last 3 films have different genre premise.
There was the ghost thing, the superhero thing, and now the alien thing. Through
it all, Shyamalan continues to write and direct children well, is able to turn
his superstar leading men into common men, and he also turns the best
slow-moving camera for a filmmaker not working in South Korea or Japan.
Other than that, you've been warned about "Signs.
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