...the director's strong suit is his ability to create suspense in a hushed atmosphere, where the silence is a character's worst enemy.
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M. Night Shyamalan is still looking for a script that sounds as good as his name.
"The Sixth Sense" was his breakthrough film in 1999, a movie everyone loved for its surprise ending. He followed that with "Unbreakable" in 2000, a movie that by comparison practically nobody liked. Well, I liked it, anyway. After that, the director found himself with a blockbuster in 2002's "Signs," a movie that delights for three-quarters of its running time and then produces one of the most initially dissatisfying endings in Hollywood history. Nonetheless, it's an ending that grows on you, and even if it doesn't, three-quarters of a good film is better than 100% of a bad film, so "Signs" is recommendable despite its underwhelming finish.
Have you noticed that Shymalan likes to make quiet movies? Sure, everyone has seen that the writer-producer-director's strong suit is his ability to create suspense in a hushed atmosphere, where the silence is a character's worst enemy. What's more, the director seems to like making films on a very personal scale. "Signs" is not a grand fantasy/sci-fi epic like "Star Wars" or "Lord of the Rings." Instead, similar to the two Shyamalan films that preceded it, "Signs," while ostensibly a big, global story, is worked out in small dimensions, taking small steps to make its conflict all the more intimate and all the more alarming because it feels so close to us.
The "signs" of the title refers both to crop circles, possible evidence of interstellar activity, and to hints of higher, metaphysical influences in our lives. The first meaning is the sci-fi angle. Crop circles, those leveled areas of wheat and corn fields that viewed from above form often intricate designs and arcane symbols, are thought by most authorities to be the work of pranksters, hoaxers, and their armies of imitators. But they are also considered by some observers to be genuine indications of galactic travelers, signposts to possible landings, similar to what these folks think about the huge, ancient Nasca lines in Peru. More important to our story, however, the "signs" are confirmations that there may be powers in the universe beyond our comprehension, guiding our well being or not.
As the story's main character, Graham Hess (Mel Gibson), says, there are two kinds of people: those who believe that everything happens by chance and those who believe that there are no coincidences in the world. People either believe they're alone or they have someone with them. Hess is a former minister who forsook his faith in God, religion, and miracles after the tragic death of his wife in a car accident. He no longer believes there is anyone looking out for us, no Supreme Being, just pure, blind luck. It is this secondary meaning of the word "signs" that Shyamalan mainly hangs his story on, an idea that will please viewers looking for more than another sci-fi action movie but may disappoint audiences expecting more excitement and adventure. Admittedly, Shyamalan's insistence that we delve with him into purely spiritual matters may seem more than a bit self-indulgent to a lot of viewers.
Hess lives on a small Pennsylvania farm with his two young children, Morgan (Rory Culkin) and Bo (Abigail Breslin), and, since his wife's death, his brother Merrill (Joaquin Phoenix). They are surrounded by cornfields, a key element in the unfolding drama as crop figures begin appearing throughout the world. Hess, who doesn't believe in anything anymore, including God or extraterrestrials, is at first unwilling to accept they could be of unearthly origin. But when strange things begin happening around his own house and in his fields, he begins to fear for his children and for his newfound lack of faith.
Although Gibson never quite sheds his superstar persona in the role of the ex-reverend and despite some of his typical herky-jerky mannerisms, the actor manages to do a good projecting the plight of a strong man suddenly thrust into a weak and vulnerable position. Gibson's virile screen image is protected while at the same time his credentials as an actor who's able to stretch beyond the bounds of machismo are secured. As the brother, Phoenix is equally up to the task in a more subdued, albeit in some ways more taxing, part. The brother must look up to his older sibling, admire him, and be disappointed in him, too, all the time portraying a man who is likewise plagued by self-doubt.
I liked Shyamalan's attention to the details of the smaller roles, too--the sheriff (Cherry Jones) who tries to pass off the odd incidents around the county as natural phenomenon; the army recruiter who's convinced the crop markings are proof of a planned alien invasion; and the bookstore owner who thinks the TV networks are making up stories of worldwide crop circles to sell more soda pop. The director himself even pops up in a secondary but important role as the man responsible for Hess's wife's death, and he does a convincing job. Shyamalan may be trying to out-Hitch Hitchcock in these extended cameos, but since he does them so well, who cares?
Suspense, as defined by the "Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary," is "a state or condition of mental uncertainty or excitement, as in awaiting a decision or outcome, usually accompanied by a degree of apprehension or anxiety." It's here the director excels, at least in bits and pieces. As Shyamalan demonstrated in "The Sixth Sense" and again in "Signs," it's the unknown that causes us the most dread, the most anxiety, and when he keeps his antagonists unseen, he keeps his audience most on edge. The nighttime sequence in a cornfield is a good example, or the scene in a neighbor's pantry or the one of a trespasser near the farmhouse or the penultimate, harrowing chapter in Hess's cellar. These segments play out suspensefully and scary because they exploit our fear of the unfamiliar, the unnamed, the unrecognizable. It's when the director renders the unknown visible and identified that much of the story's mystery and fright dissipate.
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