*** (out of ****)
Starring Mel Gibson, Joaquin Phoenix, Rory Culkin, Abigail Breslin, and Cherry Jones.
Directed, written, and produced by M. Night Shyamalan
2002 PG13
M. Night Shyamalan’s “Signs” is a film of almost excruciating suspense. In a time when special effects films feel compelled to show us their extraterrestrials, ghouls, or ghosts in autopsy-style detail, here is a thriller that proves to be infinitely more terrifying by showing us almost nothing at all. “Signs” is all about shadowy figures glimpsed in the night, about creaking floorboards, about strange noises and feet shuffling outside the door. Like Hitchcock, writer-director-producer Shyamalan takes a mischievous delight in playing on our fears about bogeymen hiding in the dark.
I think it was the film critic for the Houston Press who described “Signs” as Shyamalan’s departure from the “Twilight Zone”-style filmmaking that characterized his last two films, the underappreciated “Unbreakable” (2000) and his multiple Oscar-nominee “The Sixth Sense” (1999). That film critic apparently did not see the “Zone” about the neighborhood that turns paranoid and self-destructive when they suspect an alien might be in their mist. In such a vein “Signs” begins as an homage to Rod Serling and other supernatural 1950s fare like “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (1956), with scary/hokey music playing over black-and-white credits. “Signs” is like the public’s reaction to “War of the Worlds” if Orson Welles hadn’t been joking: crop circles appear all over the world, flying saucers are spotted over major cities, and everyone crowds around their televisions to watch what happens next.
Among those watching are a family living on a farm in Pennsylvania. The father (Mel Gibson) of the two children is a former Episcopal priest who lost his faith when he lost his wife. They share the farm with Gibson’s younger brother (Joaquin Phoenix), who moved in after the death of Gibson’s wife. The four of them begin to notice all manner of creepiness around the crop circle in their cornfield. To describe what they see and what they find would be criminal, but I will say that more than a few shrieks came from the audience with whom I saw the movie.
Gibson and his family are not merely blanks—on-screen stand-ins for the audience—but sharply-drawn characters with problems of their own. We see enough of their daily life to understand their reactions to what’s going on around them. Phoenix, as Gibson’s gas-station attendant brother, has perhaps the most interesting role in the film, as a not-quite-so-young man teetering on the edge of becoming a complete loser, holding on to a duty to his damaged family. We understand that it is Gibson’s shaken faith that has caused his son to no longer see his daddy as the man with all the answers. Like the family men in Shyamalan’s previous films, Gibson has a weary patience with his children; he loves them and cherishes them, but their very alive-ness seems to dig at old wounds, and the little ones know it.
Shyamalan treats their scenes with a sort of slow awkwardness, to emphasize the empty spaces between words that seems to pain Gibson most of all. Shyamalan directs the whole film precisely and without hurrying, like “The Sixth Sense,” although not as meticulous as “Unbreakable.” It is in this pacing that suspense builds and we begin to wonder what we hear scurrying faintly in the next room. Rushed movies that doubt our ability to pay attention for more than fifteen minutes at a time seldom permit this kind of breathing room and often go for louder, less rewarding payoffs.
Those familiar with Shyamalan’s two previous films will recognize several of his recurring elements in “Signs.” All three films involve collisions between the ordinary and the supernatural, usually with a troubled family at the intersection. What is so refreshing about them is that the dynamic of the family is as vital as the supernatural elements. Shyamalan does not populate his films with generic happy married couples with adorable children who are faceless and unimportant when compared to the FX-driven monsters to which they must submit. “Signs,” “Unbreakable,” and “The Sixth Sense” all feature a basically loving husband saddened by estrangement from his wife; a young boy with whom he forms, or already has, a complex relationship involving trust, admiration, and the man’s reluctance to appear vulnerable; and a sense of duty the man has toward his family. Into this the supernatural steps as the hand of God, first fearfully, then showing the man the way.
The intersection between the known and the unknown is like an object lesson for Gibson’s faithless cleric. It doesn’t matter whether the aliens in “Signs” are real or figments of the imagination. If the film were set in a less “enlightened” age than our own the characters would be beset by demons or swamp monsters. The crux of “Signs” is that the unknown is creeping around the corner, beyond our control, and that we must make our peace before it jumps out and gets us. “Signs” may not have as much to it as “The Sixth Sense” or “Unbreakable,” and the beasts jumping out of the dark may only work once on us in their visceral way before our shocked dread turns into mere appreciation. But I give “Signs” high marks for the cinematic brilliance of these shadowy sequences, and its willingness to look beyond them, as all humans must look beyond mere animal survival, and wonder.
Finished August 7, 2002
Copyright 2002 Friday & Saturday Night