I'd never seen this, so I settled back and watched. I have to say I think it's the weakest of M. Night Shyamalan's three big films. It was OK, had some tense moments and a genuine scare or two, but on the whole I didn't think it all that powerful. (Hitchcock did similar things with THE BIRDS.)
I thought
Signs was appallingly bad, myself. Possibly one of the worst SF/horror films I've ever seen.
A great deal of the film, especially the scenes within the boarded-up house with plot exposition given via the TV, was done first, and better, in
Night of the Living Dead.
And the aliens are idiots.
They can obviously travel between stars in massive fleets, as well as turn their ships invisible...but are flummoxed by a boarded-up wooden house? That's right...a boarded-up wooden house. What, they forgot their ray guns? They couldn't pick up a sledgehammer or even a big rock to gain entry? At least the zombies in
Night of the Living Dead had an excuse for failing to gain entry right away...they were frickin' zombies! What could possibly be the alien's excuse?
When we finally see an alien, he's naked, for pete's sake! No weaponry other than that poison gas spike on his wrist. He's invading the earth, and was sent down with no guns, no protection of any kind? Talk about half-assed planning! This is especially stupid considering that, like the wicked witch of the West in
The Wizard of Oz, the aliens die when they come in contact with water. That's right...water.
Which covers three quarters of the earth's surface. And which falls from the sky now and then, in a phenomenon called "rain". And they also hang around in a cornfield, which I can tell you from experience, can be a very wet place indeed.
This means that the aliens are landing in an incredibly hostile environment, with no protection at all. (Change the water to "carbolic acid", and imagine yourself asked to land on an alien world, buck naked, with hostile aliens everywhere, armed only with tear gas grenades. Not only that, but the inhabitants can easily withstand this "carbolic acid" stuff, making them virtual supermen in comparison with you. I doubt you'd be signing up anytime soon.) And even if the aliens we see are just some kind of drone, it's pointless to send them into such a hostile environment; they're just too damned easy to kill...garden hoses, fire hydrants and squirt guns are everywhere.
The subplot of Mel Gibson's crisis of faith rings false, too. Of course, his re-conversion to the (I'm assuming Episcopalian) priesthood is perfectly understandable, since God obviously intervened to give the alien invaders a case of Mass Stupidity.
Now, I didn't mean to go off on a rant here, but I obviously did. I'm a huge science fiction fan, and I like SF in general to be well-done.
Signs isn't. It's shoddy, thoughtless, and written by someone who didn't seem to realize that his overheated scenario could be ripped to shreds so easily. It's not just that
Signs is so godawful...it's an insult to the intelligence of its' audience.
I wasn't impressed with
The Sixth Sense, since I'd seen the movie M. Night Shymalan stole the idea from,
Carnival of Souls. I actually
did like
Unbreakable, though. But not enough to watch it a second time. I think the man has talent as a director, but I think he should get someone,
anyone else to write his films. Because, as a writer, the guy is pretty much a hack.
