With his last two films, Unbreakable and
The Sixth Sense,
M. Night Shyamalan has established himself as probably the hottest young
writer/director in Hollywood, whilst earning a reputation for crafting
intelligent, slow-burning thrillers with a sting in the tail. This means,
possibly unfairly, that Signs arrives with certain baggage and expectations
that it struggles to meet. The fact remains though that, taken purely on
its own merits, it is still unsatisfactory.
No time at all is wasted in setting up the events of the film, as
Pennsylvania farmer Graham Hess wakes up one morning to find huge areas of
his fields have been flattened into geometric shapes by means unknown. We
learn he is a former reverend who left the church after the death of his
wife, and who is now raising his son and daughter with the help of his
younger brother Merrill, a former baseball star.
During the next couple of days, more strange occurrences make the family
suspect all is not right: their dogs bark constantly and behave more
aggressively; young daughter Bo states matter of factly there's a monster
outside her room; mysterious noises are heard outside the house. Graham
suspects it's all a prank by some neighbours with whom he's had some
trouble before, but when every television station begins broadcasting
pictures of crop circles similar to their own from locations all around the
world, it becomes clear something is happening on a far larger scale. Is it
all a big hoax? Is it aliens? Is it all just a marketing ploy by a cola
company?
As I said, it's not for me to say. If you've read much about Signs though,
you may well already know the source of the mystery and it's here that the
film begins to unravel. For most of its running time it plays as a creepy
and efficient thriller, with some genuinely scary and tense scenes, as
well as some surprisingly funny ones. All the actors do well and we care
about the family and their situation. When the time comes for Shyamalan to
reveal his cards however, we discover he isn't holding any aces and the
entire film simply deflates and crawls into the corner. It's an interesting
concept to focus on one family's crisis in the midst of a global event, but
not an event of this nature, and certainly not merely for the purpose of
reaching the conclusion that is reached here.
DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV
connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and
played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
