Signs: Blu-ray Movie Review (2008)
Initially, M. Night Shyamalan’s 2002 chiller is absorbing, but as the movie unfolds and Shyamalan’s intent becomes clear, the film gives way to a wealth of bad decisions and unrealized expectations, all of which conspire to keep "Signs" more in line with Shyamalan’s underwhelming "Unbreakable" than with his best film, "The Sixth Sense."
Mel Gibson is Graham Hess, a widowed former minister trying to forget the past when out of nowhere, a gathering of mysterious crop circles appear in the cornfields surrounding his house. Worse, alien space ships soon are hovering over Earth.
Before you can say "duck and cover," Shyamalan is rolling in the paranoia of 1950s sci-fi cinema.
It’s here, in the film’s involving first hour, that he generates his most compelling sense of dread before delivering a second half that features, among other disappointments, the director himself as a character on which a major subplot hinges.
The moment Shyamalan’s face fills the screen, the effect is jarring (he’s no Hitchcock), the film is cheapened in what seems like a blatant push for celebrity and the spell he’s trying to cast is broken.
"Signs" never recovers from it.
Rated PG-13. Grade: C+
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