Signs review and discussion

Before I read this, is it spoiler-safe? It doesn't have a spoiler warning, but...

I still haven't seen Signs you see and, somehow, so far I've managed (I think) to remain unspoiled.

Yes, there be spoilers here, I'd steer clear until you've seen the movie. Nick doesn't give everything away, save for a few moments, but this is a movie that's best seen cold.

Great review, Nick.

There are a few spoilers and one pic you really dont need to see (Which I was surprised he used) which gave me the a quick jolt from thoughts of the first time I saw said pic...

This was a gooooood movie, I remeber my friend saying "Man I was expecting like ID:4 or the like" after we left the theater, all I could do was smile

Wow, what a surprise to wake up to. Was NOT expecting to see this yet.

Awesome job. A really great review of what is probably my favorite film of the year next to TTT.

It's interesting how you talked about home video and what we've had to deal with watching over and over again on home video. I think that makes things more shocking.

Oh, and the hollow man caption owned, of course.

And it's funny you mention Testament, because when I was younger I watched The Day After and while i've never seen Testament.....TDA shook the HELL out of me. All nuclear war or mass-disaster films like that always give me the creeps.

This is such an interesting thing to think about. You're right....the surveillance camera stuff, mainly the September 11th stuff, but other stuff that goes on too. Jets crashing at air shows....animals going wild at a zoo...beatings caught on tape.

I think a lot of us watch these things not because we truly want to, but because we've (as a society) got a hankering for the shock value that real videos carry. I know that I love watching those World's Scariest Police Chases shows, or RealTV, things like that.

Every one of us is curious enough to want to watch something we KNOW might make us feel uneasy.

Yeah. You're shocked when you read about these things in the paper, but seeing them takes it to a whole other level.

Warning MINOR SPOILER!!!!!!
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Great review Nick. I can't wait for this thing to come to dvd.I liked the camerawork in Signs better than The Sixth Sense or Unbreakable especially during a certain fight around the end. That home video scene you mentioned creeped me out as well. It's good to know that your a fan of Joaquin Phoenix.

That was very good Nick. I have never enjoyed reviews so much before. Love Chud.

***Spoilers below***

I like Signs. It is very tense but there are also very funny moments. I didn´t like the ending though. I just felt it was to easy to defeat the aliens. 8/10

Great reviews, and I agree with what was said before about how great it is that Signs didn't become ID4. I know a couple of people who hated it because they didn't think that "anything" happened. Couldn't understand it myself, especially after finding out that they loved "Unbreakable."

And the XXX review sums up my feelings for it exactly, even though I rather liked the villian. I thought it started out horrendously, but got better as time progressed.

He does. And I have the scars & bruises to prove it.

Great review, Nick.

Of course, my favorite part:

<img src="http://www.chud.com/chudvd/reviews/images5/signs9.jpg" alt="" />
"Carl Cunningham enjoys a stroll between his daily routines of fathering children, defending Steven Spielberg, and conducting wetwork for the Lucasfilm cartel.'

I am going to have to agree with Jacob here Nick. You are getting better and not only that but you are becoming more articulate in you reviews. Enough so that you are becoming more a film critic then a simple film reviewer. I mean who compares XXX and films of its like to a previous generation of films and points out the revelance to this generation?

Great review and you hit it on the head with the home video sequence. When the "money shot" happened I turned to, a certain Chewer, and simply said "He is just awesome" He being M. Night. Incredible sequence and something that should remind certain Chewers of another who played upon our fears in much the same manner.

The movie itself is in my Top 5 and am certainly glad I was rewarded with a truly incredible film after such a long wait.

I have to agree with Jacob and DeLude. This is not a film review. This is straight up film criticism and I think the proof of that is in the intro.

This dissection of Shaymalan's directing and storytelling is just very well-crafted and delivered.

Also, thanks for the little explaination about why there was no traditional review when the film came out. It's definitely good to read it now.

"A subtle wind is blowing a refreshing change this way..."

<img src="http://www.chud.com/chudvd/reviews/images5/signs1.jpg" alt="" />
A look at the ubiquitous Brian Cox's walk-on cameo appearance as Chicken Breast #2.

Nick, you bastard! It's a pretty quiet Christmas Eve here at the workplace and I almost choked to death reading this caption. It took me awhile to recuperate.

Excellent review, Mr. Nunziata. Your comparison with Testament is spot-on. I loved that film though, at the same time, I think I got emotionally devastated by that chilling and tragic film. A great read! Keep up the awesome work.

Great review, as always. This is quickly becoming my favorite movie of the year.

Great review, albeit too many spoilers for those who have yet to see it.

Great review. As always, your words seem like exact expressions of your thoughts, which is what I really value in a reviewer.

It'll take another viewing and a lot more thought before I can consider replacing this with The Two Towers as #1 movie this year.

"I defy anyone to pinpoint a scene in a recent film that matches the intensity and otherworldly fear that permeates the sequence where the video of the Brazilian children seeing the creature outside cross the street is shown... I still get chills just thinking about the Signs scene because that is how we often see the things we should never see..."

That's exactly how I feel, right there. I think that moment, and Phoenix's absolutely heart-stopping reaction, sent this movie into the stratosphere for me. Like the scene from The Others where the children first meet Victor, this was cinema of pure, terrifying effectiveness.

Spoilers below, just in case...
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I'd say even more than the home video at the birthday party, I related to the characters watching the nonstop news coverage of the lights in the sky. I knew exactly how they felt when they were staying up all night watching the same footage over and over (for example, the bird hitting the invisible object and falling to the ground). It was the same for me on September 11th, which I am usually hesitant to bring up, but it applies here. I watched constant news coverage for days, just trying to wrap my head around what had happened. It's the same with Graham and Merrill, trying to wrap their heads around the revelation that aliens are real while they stare at the television screen.

That and many other things are what made this movie engrossing for me. It's how most of us would experience an event like that - through the TV and radio. Focusing on just a few characters makes us care about them more, and the claustrophobic third act is quite scary.

Great review, Nick, I very much agree with you about this movie.

Nice review, Nick. I feel the same as you-- the birthday party footage unveiling of the alien was the creepiest thing I saw all year, and the perfect way to unveil the aliens.

I'm on the fence about whether to buy this or not, but I think your review pushed me over the side. I'm a bit afraid that repeat viewings wouldn't enhance its standing, but you seem to say it holds up well.

The parallels to watching September 11 footage are probably not accidental. The movie started filming around that time, so the cast and crew were affected by the disaster. Shyamalan probably drew on that when directing and editing certain scenes, too.

Looking at all those screen caps in the review, I'm struck by how many have actors looking directly at the camera. I'll have to pay more attention to that next time I watch the movie.

Imagine my joy to get back to work from a little time off & find this!!!!

A supreme effort of M Nights & a fantastic review to go with it.
I still get chills when I think of the reveal of the alien on the TV. It resonated so perfectly with me. The first time I saw it I found myself saying Joaquin's line before he did "Get out of the way children!"
Mel just gets better with age.
Joaquin continues to impress.
And the performance M Night got out of the two kids is really really good.
You sold it to me! I can't wait for it to come locally so import it is!

So I finally got round to watching Signs, after Nick poured boiling hot scorn on me for missing it.

Love.

Shyamalan is now firmly nestled in my favourite directors list. He's three for three in my book, and it excites me to wonder just what his filmography will hold in ten, twenty years time. Calling him the "new Spielberg" is silly (we haven't finished with the old one yet) but they do share a common ability to meld pulp themes with personal drama, presented with confidence and intelligence - something to be treasured.

The video scene creeped me out, as did the creature on the barn. And the scene with Mel and his dying wife were actually painful to watch. I don't know why but those sort of "last conversation with a loved one" scenes always get to me.

Definitely agree on the praise for Joaquin Phoenix too. I was surprised at how funny the movie was, largely thanks to his character. Sixth Sense and Unbreakable sometimes feel too serious, a bit unrelenting, and I think that his deft juggling of humor and genuine terror in this movie shows that Night is growing as a filmmaker and writer.

I actually thought Rory Culkin was a better child actor than the Osment-Bot. He came across as a real kid, silly and serious at the same time.

My only quibble would be that, like his previous films and as Nick explained so perfectly in his intro, Shyamalan's films often hinge on a plot point or twist that doesn't bear closer scrutiny. In this case I don't mind the slightly convenient water weakness (although the daughter's habit of leaving glasses around the house is a bit contrived in retrospect) as I saw that as a nod to the "little things defeat the invasion" motif of War Of The Worlds. But I did wonder why aliens who are allergic to water would want to conquer a planet which is covered in the stuff, and where it falls from the sky without warning.

Still, great movie and a fucking great review. Worth the wait - on both counts.

Also, I was surprised that this wasn't mentioned in the documentary. As a kid I was nuts about UFOs, spending hours peering at photos of blurred lights in books not unlike the one in the movie. All the way through Signs, I was convinced that it was based - not on crop circles - but the Kelly-Hopkinsville Encounter.

See what you think - <a href="http://bjbooth.topcities.com/Kelly-Hopkinsville.html" target="_blank">here.</a>

Wow. that is some freaky shit.
Signs for me is a tie for best of 2002 with TTT.

Great movie and a great review. I'm with everyone else when I say that these reviews seem far beyond your earlier stuff. This one seemed so much more expansive, and so did XXX.

Nick, it's ironic that you mention the whole video tape theory, which I agree with very much. I too have watched some of those disturbing videos (though the one my friends and I saw where called Faces of Death). The politician killing himself was one of the most disturbing things I think I've ever seen. It just bothered me so much. The same can be said about the video tape of the alien walking by, to a lesser extent though. Great review Nick.

Well, since they never explain anything I guess no one can say, but I'd liken it to the Nazis trying to take over the world even though the soldiers are allergic to bullets and bombs. You're going to take casualities, but the aliens either needed the food badly enough or just wanted to take them enough to accept that. They were just grunts sent in.

They didnt want to CONQUER earth, they just wanted to harvest the resources that were available, and go back.

I know they don't want to conquer Earth, I was making an allusion. I've heard from a lot of people that the idea of creatures that can be killed by water attacking a water planet is stupid, but if the aliens are starving, which would be implied because if they had their own food why would they attack another planet, then it's an acceptible risk. You might lose some soldiers, but you'll get a lot of food.

We never actually find out the aliens motives at all, but regardless - the idea that a simple rainstorm could wipe out your invasion force must have been a bit of a problem?

It's speculation, but maybe becuase they might be an advanced alien race, they could have technology to know the weather patterns on Earth, so they knew when to attack. Conversley, they also could have had the technology to build waterproof spacesuits, but I guess they didnt have that.

If one is going to conquer afganistan, you have to realize that there are a lot of land mines. Although most people do not have allergic reactions to exploding land mines, they are harmful nonetheless. We still attack afganistan because we want to get something out of there. Bullets may be shot at oncoming soldiers. Some of these bullets hit the soldiers & they die. Wars are still fought where there are bullets.

A rainstorm would only take out SOME of the force, unless there was a global rainstorm. So you sacrifice some grunts in Washington DC where it's raining, but you clean up in China where it isn't. If you have no food, it's an acceptible risk.

At the risk of getting involved in a rather bizarre tangential argument here...

This isn't the same as landmines and bullets. War, as we understand it, is politically motivated. The aliens in Signs would be better compared to early settlers, invading new lands for the sake of claiming them and using them.

Obviously, they expect resistance - but this isn't war. My point about the rain and abundance of water on Earth is that the planet itself is deadly to these creatures. It's in the air, the earth - everything. Our weather would kill them. Even if there were no people, no resistance, just by standing in the open they're putting themselves in harms way. It'd be like humans deciding to go and invade Poisonworld.

But anyway...

They weren't there for the world, they were there for the food. I only saw the movie in the theaters, but I remember someone said that on the radio if I recall...they figured out the aliens were harvesting people. I doubt they intended to stay.

They were just taking humans and leaving. My point was that you fight through deadly attacks when a group wants something bad enough. they NEED food. So, they come down & try and get a few humans even if there is a lot of poison on the planet.

IIRC Budd Dwyer was the name of the aforementioned politician. That horrible, incredible footage is probably burned into the brains of quite a few people.

That was an excellent assessment of the film, and I too think Signs is M. Night's best film yet. Despite all that, I never want to see it again, or you'll find me twitching under the kitchen table like Travis Walton.

No trailers on this disc?

I know. This irked me like no other. Weren't there around three or four? I mean, it's the least Buena Vista can do. Some consumers do like trailers...

That documentary wasn't very good, but it was cool enough to see Newton Howard behind the scenes, working to compose that awesome score.

The movie I haven't gotten around to watching yet (though I loved it), but it's a piss poor Vista series release.

Things could be worse. Buena Vista could be greenlighting a sequel that features Gibson, playing a descendent of Graham Hess in the near future when America strikes back at the Aliens.

yeah like everyone has said, the way the aliens are revealed is terrific.

I try to stay away from the faces of death stuff and all that, but the real video camera footage i always remember is something i saw on the news:

Guy robs a gas station(?). He shoots the worker and runs out. THing is: he missed the worker. You see the worker get up and the guy outside stops, runs back in and shoots and kills the worker. Did anyone else ever see this? Sick. I hope they caught that bastard.

Nick, you did a great job on the review. Signs was easily my favorite movie of 2002. I saw TTT on New Year's Day.

Anyway, I dredged up my old review of the film...actually an extended post I made on a message forum to defend the movie from people who thought that "There was no action" and "The aliens sucked!!".

Here it is:

Oops...BIG SPOILER WARNING!

Saying Signs is a horror/alien movie is like calling Beauty and the Beast a monster movie.

The whole alien thing was just a vehicle for the central plot theme: Coincidence, luck, faith in a Higher Power and how it all ties into our everyday lives.

That's why people cheered so much in the "revelation" scene in the end.
Not because there was an (admittedly lame) alien thing in the house.

But because in that scene, Mel Gibson's character realised that all the little quirks of his family (his daughter's water problem, his brother's failure at baseball, his son's asthma, his dead wife's final words) were not just coincidences.

Everything about his family seemed geared toward saving their lives at that very moment. Was that a coincidence, was it luck, or was it a Sign that the God he had rejected when his wife died actually existed?

His son had an asthma attack at the same moment when the alien's poison gas would have killed him. His daughter's bad habit of drinking a sip of water and leaving glasses all over the place (a real condition, by the way) meant that there was a lot of water around to weaken and frighten the alien. His brother was a success at baseball because he swung so hard...but he was a failure because he swung so inaccurately. His prize-winning bat was right there over his head, and this too allowed them to beat the alien.
And Gibson's wife's last words that were haunting him..."Swing away Merril"...

He thought that these words were insignificant, and he took them as a Sign that God doesn't exist. But look at what happened.
Those words ended up being the words that snapped him into action. He told his brother them..."Swing away, Merril", and he realised that the words weren't just coincidence...they were meant to be stuck in his mind, haunting him till that very second, so that he could save his son and his family.

Coincidence, or a Sign of something greater?

The Signs weren't the stupid crop circles...don't you realise that they got like five minutes of attention for the whole movie?

The Signs were all those little things in his life that were pointing him back to his belief in something more than luck and coincidence.

The whole Alien thing could have been replaced with ANYTHING...a rabid dog, a psycho rapist, a terrorist, a mob of Satanists, a drunkard...and the essential plot would have remained intact.

The "scary" thing people were talking about wasn't ghosts...or even the aliens being particularly scary. It was the way the aliens were presented...it was the pacing of the film.
I mean...look at that children's birthday party. That was some shocking sh!t!!! And the WHOLE cinema was into it...leaning forward in their chair to see what could possibly be so "disturbing" on CNN...and when that thing walked past like Bigfoot...every one jumped! "WTF!!!"

Look at the scene with the asthma attack in the basement. Everybody was scared for the little boy. That was good directing...good acting. Great stuff. And it was damn scary. You ever saw someone struggle to breathe? Or worse...you ever struggled to breathe yourself? Scariest thing you can ever experience.

See...the simple things.

What about the scene when the aliens were entering the house?
Here's this guy telling his kids about their dead mother...specifically, her reaction to their births. Because he thought they were going to die! How beautiful/scary is that?
And the basement? How many times did you think they were dead down there? Craziness!

Plenty movies have shown the full-scale alien invasions...but how many have shown what the invasions are like to individual families? We always see fighter jets and heroes making all-out attacks...but how would it be for you and me? How helpless would we feel if we saw those UFOs in the air...saw the green men approaching us...and all we have to defend ourselves is a frying pan and a yardbroom...

There was a time when enjoying a movie meant suspending your disbelief and "being there". Using your imagination, kinda like you do when you read a book.

Movies like the Matrix, Star Wars and Independence Day have introduced so much visual stimuli and flash (and don't get me wrong, I love them) that people have forgotten how to immerse themselves in a film.

Alot of people rather let the film do all the work for them. Instead of understanding and enjoying the expression on the hero's face when he faces the dragon...and enjoying that pause when his emotion turns from awe...to fright...to resolve...to outright bravery....they rather see a big CGI scene where a dragon burns up a bunch of stuff...yay.

It's unfortunate.

It was kinda like the guy behind me, who decided to bawl out "SH!T!!" after the movie, and complain about how the aliens were so lame compared to the ones in Independence Day because they were harmed by water.

The roughest, ghetto-est, baddest-looking man in the cinema from two rows in front turned around, rest aside his weed or whatever, and hit him one cuss. And proceeded to explain the movie to him...kinda like I'm explaining it now.

I felt good that someone who has seen the harsher side of life could receive a moment of enrichment from such a finely-crafted film.