Let me get off on a little rant here. I believe that mandatory castration should be implemented on any person who decides that a moment of silence during a movie is a carte blanc to inflict and advertise their tainted genes on the rest of us genetic normals by yelling out loud stupid phrases in the middle of the movie. It's as if they very idea of being left alone in their mind without any distractions would cause their entire cranium to explode from the knowledge that there wasn't anything in there to begin with! The next person to start yelling out anything, ANYTHING!, during a movie, I'm taking out my box cutter, getting up from my chair and filtering out the gene pool. And that goes for you people who still haven't learned to shut off your cell phone in a theater. You have been warned!


That felt good.

I read an article once that explained that a writer who takes on the subject of the supernatural is asking for trouble. It's just too immense to contain within the confines of the Three Act structure. The people who did take on the supernatural, and did it well, learned to yield to the forces they were depicting, i.e, open endings. Now call it ego, but Shyamalan thinks he can get over this and wrap a neat little bow at the end of his movie's thread. the result is another weak ending, such as the one in Unbreakable. Shyamalan is good, but he just hasn't quite mastered the art of deciding whether he'll follow the theme of his films or the flow of them. But since the end was of course at the end, it didn't taint the rest of the film which was of course GOOD and SCARY!

Now I already said this once in a review, but scary movies don't scare me like they used to especially these days. So the fact that I screamed during this film, which I haven't done since I was seven, has got to say something about this film.

Signs is set out in the farm country of Pennsylvania, just 45 miles outside of Shyamalan's favorite town (and my hometown) Philadelphia. The story centers around the Hess family, the widowed ex-preacher, Graham Hess, his two children, Bo and Morgan, and his brother, Merrill, an ex-minor league baseball player. On one particular morning things in this otherwise normal family's life turn toward the weird. For one thing, circular patterns have been created in their nearby cornfield and one of their dogs goes berserk and tries to attack one of the children. At first, these incidents are dismissed in an all casual way. But they continue on with Graham seeing a dark figure standing on the roof of his house. After he and his brother comically try and catch the trespasser and become aware that there may be something just a little off about a trespasser that can jump like an Olympic pole vaulter and then there are the reports on the Tv about crop circles appearing at astonishing rates in other countries. Slowly, the normalcy of life begins to unravel.

Now Shyamalan's movies all exist in their own little world which just happens to be in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and where the people all take long, quiet pauses and give you creepy stares. Where kids are much smarter than any kid we've known in real life and of course, where strange and supernatural events happen every few years. This of course prompts my friend to say after every Shyamalan film, "Damn Sybil, you came from a freaky town." And then I have to remind him that it was only a movie.

I have to give it up to Shyamalan for letting Mel Gibson into this weird world of his and getting him to conform to it. Gibson is the most interesting in "Signs" than he has been in years. Apparently Shyamalan has a knack for getting older, big-name Hollywood actors off their laurels and actually working for their money (Gibson even commented on this). Joaquin Phoenix does quite a job existing within the same screen as Gibson. He makes himself just as present as Mel in every scene and they both play off each other effortlessly.
The children are also something to admire. They're not too insightful to the point where we scoff, but just in that quick cut-to-itness that's inspired by one part fact and 2 parts imagination. Rory Culkin seems to be better off in his career now than his brother was at the same age. Him and Abigail Breslin are just great in the film.

One intereseting aspect about the film is it's seamless blend of suspense and comedy, sometimes well within ten seconds of each other. It helps alleviate the film keeping it from being too serious and then suspenseful. it also lightens the audience up before they get scared out of their wits again.

Now the flaw in the film is it's theme, coincidence, or how there is no such thing as coincidence. Somehow it just didn't seem like it fit in the movie and everytime it was brought up it created corny, hokey dialogue and words like "Swing-away"??? I know what it was in reference to now, but I can think of better and less absurd ways to say what it meant.

On the whole, the movie is worth seeing in the theaters, especially after the big letdowns this summer. I don't know about the rest of you but this was MY MOST ANTICIPATED movie of the summer and it didn't let me down half as much as the rest of the big hoopla films in the last few months. So if you'll excuse me, my summer movie season is officially over.


Recommended:
Yes

Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 9 - 12