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Signs [DTS] [2002]


RRP: £17.99
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Editorial
Amazon.co.uk Review

Director-writer M Night Shyamalan brings his distinctive, oblique approach to aliens in Signs after tackling ghosts (The Sixth Sense) and superheroes (Unbreakable). With Mel Gibson replacing Bruce Willis as the traditional Shyamalan hero--a family man traumatised by loss--and leaving urban Philadelphia for the Pennsylvania sticks, the film starts with crop circles showing up on the property Gibson shares with his ex-ballplayer brother (Joaquin Phoenix) and his two troubled pre-teen kids (pay attention--all these character quirks turn out to be important). Though the world outside is undergoing a crisis of Independence Day-sized proportions, Shyamalan limits the focus to this family, who retreat into their cellar when "intruders" arrive from lights in the sky and set out to "harvest" them.

Just as Unbreakable slowly revealed itself to be Superman re-thought as an intense personal drama, this is The Birds redone as a religious drama of faith lost and perhaps regained. The tone is less certain than the earlier films--some of the laughs seem unintentional and Gibson's performance isn't quite on a level with Willis's commitment--but Shyamalan still directs the suspense and shock dramas better than anyone else.

On the DVD: Signs has THX-certified Dolby Digital Surround Sound which reproduces in the home exactly as the scary sounds that creeped you out in the cinema. A selection of deleted scenes are mostly tiny, but there's a self-reflexive joke (wisely dropped but worth preserving) as Gibson wishes his dead wife were here in the crisis because she was so smart: "She always knew how movies would end." A six-part making-of goes deeper than the usual puff-piece, including an interesting alternative to a commentary track as Shyamalan talks through a précis of clips and on-set snippets. A tradition continued from the Sixth Sense and Unbreakable DVDs is an extract from Pictures, "Night's first alien film". It's a teenage camcorder effort in which the future A-list Hollywoodian is menaced by a tiny Halloween-masked robot. Also included are a "multi-angle storyboards" feature, subtitles in a clutch of languages and eerie menu screens. --Kim Newman


It splits opinions, but at least it's not just 'okay'.
Review date: 2008-10-22 Rating: 8 out of 10

I personally find Signs to be Shyamalan's best film - I am in a position to judge, having watched every single blinkin one of them in film studies.

Signs focuses on how an alien invasion affects one family and one family alone. It also explores faith (and lack of it) in a way that can be interesting even to those who are completely and utterly unconvinced by religion.

Shyamalan's success in this film revolves around what you don't see, rather than what you do see. People fear the unknown more than they fear something which is standing in front of them, and that applies to the audience too.

I must say, after having watched it for the first time in about 5 years, it has fast become one of my favourite films and I am just about to order it on dvd.

REegarding other reviewers - I enjoy how some people think GPS would work for the aliens, when they don't have access to the satellites which do enable us to have GPS. Also, it is very typically human to expect an alien race to work in the same way that humans do - they may be advanced, but that may not be due to GPS and internet scrabble, perhaps more due to proper thought and practical navigation.

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Reviews


And the bug-eyed monsters? Are green, yes.
Review date: 2008-07-07 Rating: 6 out of 10

Signs tries to have a bob each way on too many horses in the race for it to turn up a net winner. The premise is simple, and schlock-ish enough: Mysterious corn circles appear all over the world, explicable by none but the proverbial crazed Doctor Hans Zarkov, formerly of NASA, whose best shot is that a greater intelligence from another world is here to say a big hello to planet earth. Maybe to make friends. Maybe to invade. Maybe to take humans for food. They're clever than us, so who knows?
So far, so ID4. The cinematic hat-tipping doesn't stop there, though: Independence Day begets Close Encounters of the Third Kind, begets ET, begets Invasion of the Body Snatchers, begets (creepily and effectively) The Birds.

But all this thriller/Sci Fi schtick is a ruse: the film actually ruminates on a few topics more cerebral than that, and to a large extent the thriller element just gets in the way.

For example: it doesn't become clear till fairly late in the piece what is causing the crop circles. Up to that point, Mel Gibson and family spend considerable energy chasing rustling corn cobs around their back yard. Despite how it sounds, this is eerie, and makes a point (of which something has been made in the press notices on this film) about the new American Sense Of Unease. In the same way that Invasion of the Body Snatchers commented on the McCarthyist programme in the 1950s, there is good mileage to be made in the observation that, without much prompting, fully grown men will cack their pants when the wind blows on the plants over their back fence. But the force of that point evaporates the moment a rubbery green man pops out of the foliage and legs it, Benny Hill style, past the back porch and down the lane.

The "Signs", it turns out, aren't really the crop circles at all, and this is the other major bone I have to pick with this film. This is a simple matter of preference, and I don't mark the film down on it at all, but simply mention for the record that I think it's bogus: The film has, from the very start, a pretty obvious metaphysical/religious angle (Gibson plays an ex-priest who has lost the faith) and, while it's finally addressed late in the film, the issue continually dangles throughout, hovering just so as you know it's there, only you don't know which side of the fence the film will come down on. It's like watching a golfer take a really long birdie putt. Well, and without giving the game away, it's firmly struck, the ball rolls true, and ... in the last yard it breaks violently the wrong way and careers down a very fast green and into a bunker.

Bogey. Enough said.

Olly Buxton

I love you, I hate you, I love you, I hate you, I love you
Review date: 2008-04-27 Rating: 10 out of 10

For me Signs is a fine film but like so many other reviewers I am aware that Signs splits opinions. I don't think this is a bad thing. For what its worth my wife and I very much enjoyed this film - for whatever reason - we did. Now its a favourite and we enjoy it everytime.

The film is based upon a family who live in Pennsylvania who consist of two children, father and Uncle. The mother of the children is killed in a freak accident and its her last words that lead the father (an ex-holy man) to understand that everything he can see is not all there is and that is what eventually leads him to restore his faith.

The film is set against an impending Alien invasion. I felt this was done very well and had the film been simply based upon this sort of thing would have worked just as well. However, M. Night Shyamalan wanted something deeper than that and added the twists and turns of a man who'd lost his faith and two children who had lost their mother. For me, Signs is a fine film and if taken for what it is won't let anyone down. Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix are excellent - especially Phoenix. 5 out of 5 for me but be warned - this film isn't for everyone.

You either love it or you hate it
Review date: 2008-01-19 Rating: 10 out of 10

ok here it is... this is a great movie even if you dont believe in extraterrestrials because even though this movie is about aliens there is so much more to the plot then that. It's also about regaining lost belief in something that grips your life. Mel Gibson i must admit im not that fond of him, but you have to hand it to the guy he can act! he plays a widowed priest that loses faith from a freak accident on his wife, left with 2 young children he struggles to keep his composure on life. But facing an epic struggle of survival the bonds tying both the relationship of him and his children and the willingless to regain his lost faith in christianity grow stronger, as he realises all things in the world are not as bad as they seemed before.

Not bad for my first attempt
Review date: 2007-11-18 Rating: 6 out of 10

This is the first of his films I've seen. It was pretty good, plenty of very well thought out reviews on these pages bear this out, but......I could'nt help thinking it was a little drawn out - when we could have "cut to the chase' a lot sooner.
But hey, I'm no director or screenplay writer, and it's got some beautiful filming, some wonderful "mid-west" type scenery and atmosphere, small town America, priests who have fallen from their faith, and a pretty cranky and downright nasty e.t. .......!
Great fun, not on my "A" list though.

Product Details/Specifications


Actor(s):
Mel Gibson|Joaquin Phoenix|Rory Culkin

Creators:
Mel Gibson|Joaquin Phoenix|Rory Culkin (Primary Contributor)

Director(s):

Recording label: Touchstone Home Video
Manufacturer: Touchstone Home Video
EAN: 5017188887199
Binding: DVD
Number of items: 1
Format: Dubbed, PAL, Widescreen,
Release date: 2003-03-31
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Audience rating: Suitable for 12 years and over
Region code: 2
Running time: 102 minutes
Theatrical release date: 2002
Language: Danish (Subtitled)
Language: Dutch (Subtitled)
Language: English (Subtitled)
Language: Finnish (Subtitled)
Language: Greek (Subtitled)
Language: Icelandic (Subtitled)
Language: Norwegian (Subtitled)
Language: Russian (Subtitled)
Language: Swedish (Subtitled)
Language: English (Original Language)
Language: Russian (Dubbed)

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