I'm sure you want to know the answer to the question: "Is Mel Gibson's new movie, Signs, as scary as the ads promise?"
After seeing the film Tuesday night in preview, I don't think that is the right question to ask. Read on.
For most movies, the less you know going in, the sweeter the payoff will be once the final credits roll. For Signs, I think the MORE you know going in will help you appreciate the movie to its fullest. No, that doesn't mean my review will be chock full of spoilers. I actually intend to discuss very little of what goes on in the film. But I do want to take some time and let you know what this movie is and isn't.
First of all, I want to say right up front that I absolutely LOVE Signs. It will almost certainly rank on my Top 10 list for the year (unless it is just a fantastic fall and December), and I will be checking this out in theaters again very soon with different friends. I "got" early on what writer-director-producer M. Night Shymalan was hoping to do with this movie, and I think he succeeded splendidly. Shymalan uses genre films that can be marketed as ghost stories (The Sixth Sense), superhero tales (Unbreakable), and now alien invasion flicks (Signs) to express larger, deeper, more personal ideas. He always grounds his supernatural films in reality. The Sixth Sense was about a son and his mother, and a husband and his wife. But it was also about saying goodbye, letting go, and accepting death. Unbreakable was about a man dealing with a physical abnormality and still being a dad and a husband. But it was also about the creation of a superhero and a super-villain, embracing destiny, and using one's gifts to their fullest.
Now we have Signs. I'm sure most of you reading this have seen the ads, the commercials, and/or trailers. Buzz was pretty high going into my Tuesday preview. The audience was stoked to see a movie that marketing seemed to promise would scare the heck out of them with aliens, monsters, and things that go bump in the night. Signs ended up being so much more than that. It would be easy to make a movie about aliens coming to Earth, leaving elaborate crop symbols in cornfields, and then invading the planet and taking us all prisoner. We've seen THAT film countless times. We haven't really seen a movie like Signs before.
It has elements of The Day the Earth Stood Still, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and even The Others and The Blair With Project in it. But it's more intimate, more . . . sneaky. This film set out to tell a story first. It set out to form a complete thought, and it did that. This is a movie that, I think, will get deeper and more rewarding with multiple viewings. The first time you see it, you will be into the thriller aspects of the film. You may be disappointed that it doesn't have a ton of aliens or a fleet of hovering motherships zapping us all into damn fine kindling. But you will actually THINK about the flick afterwards. And the more you think about it, the more you may want to see it again to see how Shymalan so expertly weaves a tapestry of clues and information, leading to a conclusion that is as emotionally satisfying as it is intellectually satisfying.
Early on, the film has a little fun playing around with the notion that the crop symbols in the cornfields of Graham Hess' (Gibson) farm could be a hoax perpetrated by local yahoos. Graham is a former minister and father of two who lost his faith when he lost his wife (Patricia Kalember) in a tragic accident six months earlier. His brother, Merrill (Joaquin Phoenix), now lives with the family and helps out with the chores and the raising of Graham's two kids (Rory Culkin and Abigail Breslin).
But then a series of events happen that make it VERY clear that the alien threat is VERY real and possibly even dangerous to the future of humanity. At this point, you either want to see the movie switch to the Oval Office, the military bases, and the panic in the streets of New York and L.A., or you want to stay on that farm with Graham and his family and watch them deal with what's going on. Again, I reiterate, we have seen aliens-invading-the-Earth movies before. Signs is about the Hess family and how they deal. Why them? OK, here is a tiny spoiler. There is a pattern to the symbols. They literally are signs. Those who patterned the signs are those who prepare the way for the others.
Signs takes the threat of creatures among us seriously (well, for the most part it does ... some thought the ending was a touch silly, but I kind of liked it). At the very least, this movie should win the Academy Award for Best Sound Design. Shymalan throws in some cheap scares like phones that ring too loud and dogs that appear suddenly from out of frame and bark loudly into the Dolby Digital. But it's the clackety-clack alien gibberish heard over a walkie-talkie that may keep you up later on. It's the scurrying of one or maybe many aliens amid the tall ears of corn growing in the Hess family's backyard. It's the shadow under the doorway that could be your doom.
Gibson, Phoenix, and the two kids have great faces. There is a point in this movie where the four are boarding up their farmhouse, because they think the invasion is coming. The TV has gone blank, the radio no longer works, it's nightfall, and the wind is howling. Suddenly, as Merrill is hammering in the last board, Graham's eyes see something out the window, and he slowly, carefully backs up. We never see exactly what the character sees, but we know it's not good. Graham then gathers up his kids and heads for cover.
I appreciated those moments. The film has kind of a grim Close Encounters feel to it in spots, and then a magnificently wry, even silly sense of humor in others.The family, for instance, takes all of their cues about how to ward off aliens from a cheesy conspiracy book Graham's son Morgan (Culkin) buys at the bookstore in town. They even craft party hats out of tin foil in an effort to prevent the aliens from reading their minds. And Phoenix is just hilarious as a former high school jock who goes from believing the crop symbols were the result of nerds without girlfriends trying to mess with normal people to being a true believer.
I don't want to oversell Signs. I want to make that very clear. I think the ads have done the film a slight disservice in promising the audience more than it delivers on a grand scale. You really are not going to see that many aliens. There is no mothership. There are no ray guns or end-o-the-world destructo beams. No one gets their brains sucked out. There are no alien anal probes. Mulder doesn't kiss Scully. You may want all that stuff. This film doesn't have it. What it does have is a brain, a heart, and a plan.
Oh, come on, Ted! Enough with this drivel! Is the movie scary?!?!?!
Ahem. Cough, cough. Yeah, it's pretty friggin' scary!
Signs is rated PG-13 for frightening moments.
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