SIGNS

Starring: Mel Gibson, Joaquin Phoenix, Rory Culkin, Abigail Breslin and Cherry Jones
Writer/Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Running Time: 106 mins
Certificate: 12A

Out to buy on DVD 27th March

After loosing his wife six months previous, Reverend Graham Hess (Gibson) had turned his back on his church and his belief in God. Throwing himself into working on his crop farm, Graham awakes one morning to hear his dogs barking and his children shouting frantically. He and his brother Merrill (Phoenix) run into the field where the shouting is coming from to find the children, Morgan (Culkin) and Bo (Breslin), looking at a huge crop circle, that when viewed from above measures over five hundred feet long. Thinking this is just a prank, the family continue as usual until they see on TV that thousands of crop circles are appearing throughout the world. Is it a sign that something is coming or the most elaborate hoax the world has ever seen?

After dealing with the supernatural superheroes and, writer/director M. Knight Shyamalan enters the world of science fiction.

Bringing his slow build up, suspenseful style to the alien invasion movie, Shyamalan has created a film that is very Hitchcock with a dash of Spielberg. He achieves this by taking Hitchcock's way of slowly revealing the plot from the lead character's prospective and using quick cuts and lighting to build suspense while combining this with Spielberg's take on the single parent family dealing with extreme circumstances.

The performances of the four lead characters draw you into their plight. Mel Gibson's Graham Hess, a man who has had his faith taken away from him, is his best role in years. Gibson gets to show all of his emotions on screen and the scenes were he shows his anger towards God for taking his wife are some of the most powerful in the movie. Shyamalan has again shown he is the consummate director of children. Rory Culkin (One of the Culkin Clones. Is that the twist ending?) and Abigail Breslin are very convincing and excellent child actors with the very cute Breslin as Bo, been the comic relief. Some of her comments are laugh out loud funny.

The movie does have its problems. It is very slow moving in the first act. Were some will argue that it builds the suspense perfectly, for me it is when Graham starts to believe what is happening might be real and the excellent score by James Newton Howard finally kicks in, is when the movie finally gets out of first gear. Also the dialogue between the characters isn't as snappy and spontaneous as it could be in the first act, the characters seem to be forced to talk to each other and there are very long pauses between the quite limited exchanges. This is really down to Shyamalam's dialogue writing skills, he does have a gift for the dramatic but when it comes to ordinary conversations, I think he should have a word with Quentin Tarrantio or Kevin Smith.

Is M. Knight Shyamalan is new Steven Spielberg? Not yet. I'd like to see how he handles a major action sequence first but as a character director he is on par if not better at times.

In Signs he has delivered an excellent Sci-Fi suspense thriller that is beautifully shot. While he still doesn't surpass the standard he set himself with The Sixth Sense, this is a better paced and more audience friendly movie than Unbreakable. What also makes it difference is the lack of major plot twist at the end. It does seem to make the conclusion abit lacklustre as you are expecting something earth shattering but the events of the movie are nicely concluded with a message of hope.

You'll never look at a crop circle again without wondering who created it.

The Making of Signs
Looking for Signs - DVD screenwriting diary
Building Signs Storyboard featurette
Making Signs - Audio commentary from the director and crew
The Effects of Signs - Visual effects
Signs: The Music - Featurette on composer James Newton Howard
Full Circle - Finishing the film featurette

Deleted Scenes
Graham & Merrill
The Flashbacks Scene # 1
Scene # 2
The Dead Bird
Alien in the attic & third story

Storyboards
Multi-angle feature Graham, the knife and the pantry
Night's First Alien Movie
Dolby Digital and dts soundtrack