Starring: Mel Gibson, Joaquin Phoenix, Rory Culkin, and Abigail Breslin

Signs is the best alien-invasion, end-of-the-world movie ever made. Director M. Night Shyamalan's latest is smart, funny, engaging, and creepy – sometimes utterly terrifying. It is destined to be as classic as the many genre films it emulates. (This review won't spoil anything, but I still suggest you see the movie free and clear first. The less you know, the better).

First, some ground rules. It is incredible that a young director such as Shyamalan has been able to establish such a unique and widely-praised style in such a short career. So far I've met two kinds of fan of his movies. There are those who loved The Sixth Sense and disliked Unbreakable, and then there are those who loved both movies. In my opinion, the first group would not have enjoyed The Sixth Sense had the big secret been spoiled for them, while the second group would still have loved how the film took such delicate care in telling a good scary story with wonderfully vivid characters.

Unbreakable, however, has always been a polarizing subject among Shyamalan's growing number of fans. I am always saddened to read reviewers mention Unbreakable in hushed, disappointed tones, as if it were such a storytelling failure in comparison with The Sixth Sense (it certainly was monetarily, but art is not a horse race). Unbreakable was a comic book movie that didn't look like a comic book movie, a film that asked the audience to consider what a superhero would look and act like in the real world. After you dispense with the disbelief that nothing like this could ever happen, think for a moment how such events would play out in the real world. You don't get a man in tights, you get a man in a raincoat. You don't get maniacally deranged supervillains, you get. . . Sam Jackson. In the end, I decided that when discussing Unbreakable with the perennially disappointed, it is best to just agree to disagree. Winning that argument isn't as important as anticipating the next gift from Shyamalan's imagination.

"Does anyone remember where we parked?"

And what a gift of imagination Signs is. Judging by their rarity, successfully creepy movies are among the most difficult movies to make. They succeed only when tension and release are properly balanced. Too much tension, and you run the risk of saturating the audience (or, more likely, making them laugh – pretty much every slasher film ever made has this effect in spades). Too little tension, however, means that instead of scary, a film is merely discomforting. Shyamalan uses a big ol' bag of tricks from the Hitchcock and Spielberg schools of directing in order to balance his movies, and Signs benefits from miserly dispensation of chills. Like all the best creepy movies in our post-modern age (from The Exorcist to The Blair Witch Project), Signs asks the audience to make a bargain: in exchange for relaxing your self-aware wisecracking for two hours, you'll get one helluva thrill ride in return. (For those who argue that a movie shouldn't have to make you work to get something out of it, I ask them whether if given a choice they would rather read a book or listen to it on tape).

Mel Gibson plays Graham Hess, a recently widowed father of two living on a farm in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. His younger brother Merrill, solidly played by Joaquin Phoenix, moved in with Graham after his wife died, but it is also insinuated that he is a minor-league screw-up as well (he has a dead-end job at a gas station, and a promising minor-league baseball career went nowhere; he acts like a failed high school bully around other townspeople). Graham himself is a bit of a screw-up; he used to be a reverend, but lost his faith in God following his wife's death. His two children (Rory Culkin, who is one of the best Culkins yet to emerge from that cursed demonic brood, and adorably vulnerable Abigail Breslin) look up to their father to be a rock, yet Graham is reluctant to do anything that might risk his family, and they confuse his reluctance with cowardice.

Everyone's sanity is put to the test when a crop circle appears on the farm, their dogs bark at the night, and a shadowy trespasser is chased off their property. Meanwhile, television news reports show they are not alone in their experience. Soon enough, the Hess family play a part, however small, in the upcoming alien invasion. Will they survive? Will Graham regain his faith? Will I ever stop asking questions?

There's just something about an Aqua Velva man.

In the end, Signs shares more similarities with Unbreakable than with the The Sixth Sense, yet still emerges as a unique movie. While at its heart, Sense was a well-told ghost story, Unbreakable was a reinvention of a genre. The same goes for Signs. In telling the story of an alien invasion, instead of focusing on the White House, the military, and the obligatory Jeff Goldblum
character, Signs gives us a group of identifiable people in real situations dealing with the unthinkable. I've heard criticism that in Signs Shyamalan inserts too many homages to (one could say "rips off") classic alien invasion movies such as The War of the Worlds or Close Encounters of the Third Kind. That criticism underappreciates one of the film's many subtle running jokes. We are in such a media-saturated society that when challenged with the fantastic people grasp for whatever frames of reference are immediately available. The scenes that ring truest in the film involve the family gathered around the television watching the world end on CNN, demonstrating the irony that, like ostriches in the sand, they are often more interested in the filtered reality shown on their living-room television than in the actual alien terror happening just outside their house.

You have to appreciate a film where the most suspenseful moments involve everyday items. Whispers over a baby monitor, reflections across a knife's edge, the shrill whine of the Emergency Broadcast System; all deliver terror more effectively than a thousand hockey masks ever could. Shyamalan understands that the best part of suspense is in the waiting, the anticipation that if the hero goes down the stairs alone something bad is going to happen. Too much waiting, and the fear dissipates, but just enough patience, and you're clawing the armrests. Signs depends on suspense to entertain the audience, but it's the characters that finally make us care. The acting is superb, and the writing so engaging that you genuinely fear for their safety. Expecting Shyamalan's penchant for twists and trickery kept me guessing throughout. In most of films that pass for horror these days, in the very first reel you can guess the exact order in which every walking stereotype has to die, and realize who lives (thanks to Sigourney Weaver, it's always the girl). With Signs, you never know what will happen. After the two-hour mark, you don't know if things are going to end happily, or very, very badly.

I see green people.

Alas, the ending won't satisfy everyone, because Shyamalan chose to be consistent with the story he is telling at the expense of sending the audience screaming from the theater. Under most circumstances the latter is preferable, especially since Shyamalan gets the audience in the palm of his hand like few directors ever do. Yet, I appreciated the confidence he places in his script. While realizing that some of those same "perennially disappointed" filmgoers will cry "Sellout!" as they leave the theater, the majority will recognize that the story is not in service to the aliens, but the aliens are in service to the story. I'll leave it at that.

Signs is a superbly entertaining and eminently satisfying film, and barring the highly improbable miracle of finding ten better films between now and 2003, it earns a spot on my "Best of 2002" list.

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Things to watch out for: Actually, this time, listen for. James Newton Howard, a journeyman film score composer with over thirty mostly disappointing credits in the Internet Movie Database (with the noticeable exception of his work for The Sixth Sense and the outstanding Unbreakable score), delivers wonderfully bizarre music for Signs. Seemingly inspired by Bernard Herrmann's slashing score from Psycho, it's discordantly uncomfortable, keeping the audience on edge throughout. Also, in a summer filled with CGI effects, Signs is positively old-fashioned in its lack of computerized effects. There is, however, a single CGI shot that unfortunately doesn't work very well, pulling the audience out of the film and back into reality at an inopportune time. Don't be tempted to dismiss the whole movie on account of that one shot (as some people behind me in the theater felt obliged to do). Finally, kudos to Shyamalan for editing his own theatrical trailers. The preview for Signs perfectly accomplished its goal: get the audience into the theater without giving the entire movie away. Now, if only Robert Zemeckis took a hint. . . .

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