Signs

I have said before that I only judge what is on screen. Anecdotes about the production or anything in the extended universe can be interesting, but they do not factor into my final judgment of a movie. I judge what is put on the screen.

With Signs, though, I have a hard time separating my feelings about this movie AND media literacy, hot takes, and film criticism. How a film is received, thought about, and discussed can impact how it is remembered, but should that factor into what I think about the film itself? I think so, if only because I cannot escape the influence of my peers. With this film, and a few others, I cannot get over the delayed reception to what we actually saw on screen.

The movie itself is good. It's not great, but it is genuinely spooky and tense. M. Night Shyamalan is gifted when it comes to pacing and building tension, both of which enhance his films. His almost unnaturally still camerawork makes you feel trapped and anxious, even as you pore over every detail in the frame. However, as often as his camerawork works for the story, Shyamalan can feel limited in his storytelling techniques.

The movie focuses on disillusioned Episcopal priest Graham Hess, played by Mel Gibson, and his children, Bo and Morgan, played by Abigail Breslin and Rory Culkin, respectively. They live with Graham's brother, Merrill, a former minor league slugger played by Joaquin Phoenix. Graham left the church after his wife was killed in an accident, and he and his brother now live on a farm in Pennsylvania.

The actors all punch above the relatively thin characterization and play their parts as a family that has settled into the day-to-day strangeness of losing someone as central to your life as a wife or mother.

I try to avoid spoilers as much as possible, but the story quickly reveals itself to be about an alien encounter. Aliens in film are generally characterized as either so far beyond human intelligence and understanding that they recognize us as little more than animals, or as creatures that are themselves little more than animals, acting purely on instinct and the will to survive.

Despite looking like Greys, these aliens aren't particularly smart, and despite their relative size, they aren't much more imposing than an aggressive NBA player. Nude and hissing, their only apparent methods of attack seem to be a poisonous gas and swiping at people with their claws. These creatures traveled across untold and unfathomable distances to invade a planet full of aggressive apes that split the atom—and one where water, a substance that is acidic to them, covers most of the surface.

Forgive me, but these must be the dumbest aliens this side of the Milky Way.

Why do I still give this movie a B?

Because the movie isn't really about an alien invasion or the efficacy of their plan. The movie is about faith. It is about a man whose faith was central to both his career and his life, but who gave up that faith after the death of his wife and was subsequently lost because of it.

His faith is restored when a ridiculous set of circumstances—his son's asthma and his daughter's habit of leaving half-finished glasses of water around the house—combine to save his family. His brother's faith in his own ability to hit a ball hard is ultimately used as a weapon to beat the threatening alien into submission.

The alien invasion is the inciting incident that allows the story's themes of faith and family to unfold.

I do like Signs. In fact, I think this may be my favorite Shyamalan film, a director and oeuvre that I was never really as fascinated in as everyone else seemed to be. I think it's a tight, if not thin, and suspenseful movie that is often reduced to a clunker because of dorm-room hot takes and the performatively pedantic.