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| Rated: PG-13 |
2002 |
Color |
Time |
| Starring:
Mel Gibson, Joaquin Phoenix, Rory Culkin, Abigail Breslin, Cherry Jones, Patricia Kalember, Jose L. Rodriguez |
| Directed
by: M. Night Shyamalan |
| Written
by: M. Night Shyamalan |
| Music:
James Newton Howard |
| Movie
Co.: Touchstone |
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HugeReviews.com Reviews:
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There’s
A Monster in My Movie, Can I Have A Glass of Water?
Signs
by Michael Flanagan
HUGE
Scary movies, sci-fi, philosophical
spirituality, these are a few of my favorite things.
All of these, and much more, can be found in the amazing
new film by M Night Shyamalan, Signs.
You shouldn’t read this, or any other review, until
you’ve seen the movie. But
see this movie. Don’t
keep reading until you do.
I mean it. I’m
not kidding! Okay,
good.
First, the scary stuff.
Signs is essentially an alien invasion horror
movie, told from the point of view of a small family in
Pennsylvania. It begins with a crop circle, and quickly escalates to much
more.
The alien on the roof is brief and
frightening. You
only see it in shadow for a second, and then you only see its
own shadow, passing in the light briefly.
You hear it around you as it moves up onto the Hess’
roof, and then it’s gone.
(This shot, by the way, is a tribute to Shyamalan’s
mentor, Steven Spielberg, specifically E.T.
The moving swing, an alien running into the crops…) You see next to nothing, and this is what Shyamalan has
mastered—true horror is what you don’t see, not what you do.
He uses this technique repeatedly. And he combines it with a wonderful skilled use of
tension—and stretching out the tense moments for as long as
possible. With the
pantry alien (a scene that pays tribute to Hitchcock quite
nicely), for example, you see a shadow, and then Hess visits the
bottom of the doorway three times!
Shyamalan builds the tension to its highest level, and
then lets you think you can relax, and then hits you right away.
Horror at its best.
And when the alien invasion finally
happens, it is on the same small scale, where the aliens attack
the house, but Shyamalan handles it in such an unexpected manner
that you don’t know whether to hate the character or the
writer. When aliens
attack your house, it is NOT time to tell your son what happened
when he was born! But,
it was brilliant, and works greatly as a narration to the chaos
upstairs. And it
scared the hell out of me.
To top it off, Shyamalan has seen Wait Until Dark,
it affected him in the way it is supposed to, so he uses it here
to raise the level of suspense that much higher.
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The spiritual stuff.
This is the underlying theme of the movie, hidden behind
beautiful jumps, gasps, and scares.
Everything happens for a reason.
Watch the film again, and notice how every little plot
point is there for a purpose that comes in later, with the
exception of random theories thrown out to distract the
audience. The
structure here is wonderful—the water glasses, the book, the
accident, the baseball swing—all there for a greater purpose.
But it’s the writing that really hits the Merrill Hess
home run. The
discussion between the brothers of coincidence vs. miracles, and
how it establishes the characters so well, yet at the same time
claims the theme and is still a little tense and scary, that’s
what makes the movie great. |
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And the comic relief.
This is the funniest Shyamalan movie to date. It has genuine, laugh-out-loud comic moments throughout,
mostly to serve as much-needed tension-breaker, but sometimes
just because it’s funny.
After the alien pantry scene, when Merrill, Morgan, and
Bo are sitting on the couch with the foil on, I don’t think
I’ve laughed that hard in a movie in a long time.
The comedy is well-done and perfectly timed
throughout, and I would love to see a Shyamalan comedy.
Most of all, though, he wisely uses it to create a
balance in the film. Since
it’s inherently an alien-invasion film, he keeps us reminded
of that at all times, using comic relief to reset the meter and
hit you again later. But it is also a drama about this family that has been
through so much, possibly too much.
We have to see this family suffer, without the threat of
aliens, to know that surviving, or possibly not surviving the
attack, could destroy them.
They must survive as one, a whole family, or the survival
doesn’t matter. This
is a powerful theme for an alien movie, and the comedy serves to
pull back on the drama just enough that we, as an audience,
still have fun with the scares that are to come.
If this were a suffering family made to suffer more, the
fear and shocks would be sad and upsetting, as opposed to fun
and horrifying. This
balance, achieved perfectly in the movie, could not have been
easy to do, but the reward is incredible for us.
Signs is about survival, a family’s relationship
with each other, and with God.
It is about an alien attack on our planet, as seen in a
farmhouse. It is
about crying, and laughing, and jumping out of our seats with
fear. It is about having fun, and maybe learning something in the
process, catching a little bit of idealism and philosophy about
what happens here, now, without the aliens.
M Night Shyamalan deals with his broadest pallet of
emotion yet. It’s
one of the scariest movies I’ve ever seen, in that it brings
the idea of fear to its roots and uses it to attack you like a
guy in a green alien suit.
Can’t wait for more! |
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M.
Night Shyamalan: Unstoppable: Signs
by Christian De Matteo
Super
As much as I always try to avoid doing this, it was
this time absolutely impossible to squelch the anticipation and
excitement I had going to this film.
I don’t like being let down, and usually try to sit down in a
movie theater broiling in my own cynicism.
(Granted this is nearly an impossibility because sitting in a
movie theater is a major personal sanctuary for me, but I try anyway.)
I was not let down.
M. Night Shyamalan is officially, one of my all
time favorite filmmakers. It
somehow seems that putting a great story together is for him as natural
as walking one foot in front of the other.
That is a great deal more than one can say for most, even some of
the best, filmmakers working today.
And what I most love is his obviously love of the
medium and, more than that, of the intrinsic power of storytelling.
This is a man who can spin a great yarn, in every sense of the
expression, and make it so real, so vivid and so possible, that it
doesn’t matter how far out the subject matter is.
And that’s exactly his goal.
First he takes the most simple definition of the
ghost story and turns it on its ear, yet still preserving everything
that makes the classic ghost story that.
And he makes it purely human.
Then he tackles the comic book, a very standardized (and
wonderful) story form, and he turns that on its ear… and makes it
extraordinarily human.
Now, M. Night has taken the UFO story, the Alien
Invasion concept that has been bandied around and done and redone by so
many people that it might actually be the most recurring storyline in
entertainment history. Not
even America’s eternal gods, the cowboys, have been able to hold
America’s attention that well… how often do we see a Western
anymore? But the UFO
story… hell, we’re practically guaranteed two major mainstream
attempts a year on film, let alone in books, television, comics, and so
on and so on and so on.
And he even gives Merrill (Joaquin Phoenix) the
line, “It’s like War of the Worlds” just to make sure we know
that, yes, he knows, its been done before.
But never quite like this.
As I said in my Poltergeist review, M. Night is a
man who obviously went to school, among other things, on Poltergeist,
one of the greatest personalized, family oriented and truly terrifying
ghost stories ever made. Here
he takes that approach and applies it perfectly and with all of his
distinctive hallmarks, used differently but used, to the Alien Invasion
and creates an experience unlike any I’ve ever had watching a UFO
tale.
When Robert Rodriguez tried his hand at the
self-referential Alien Invasion tale with The Faculty (a fine, fun ride
of a flick) he and screenwriter Kevin Williamson made sure to constantly
nod their hats at all that had come before them, and have fun with them. That made the film very entertaining for a UFO fan and for a
movie fan. But Shyamalan
goes leaps and bounds beyond that by boiling down the standard story of
Alien World Domination to how it affects four individuals in a farmhouse
in Pennsylvania. And not
just four individuals, but four individuals with a pained history,
personal baggage and challenges, struggling to stay together as a family
and struggling with their faith.
In an alien movie?
Yes, in a damn alien movie.
And it’s brilliant beyond belief.
We see the outside world only in the way the four
characters get glimpses of it, mostly on TV, and mostly while worrying
about their own space. We
are locked in the house with them and go out only when they go out and
only to the stores they go to. When
they forget to lock up a part of the house, it is our house that has an
unlocked attic door, not theirs. And
we don’t become a part of their family, not at all, we become the family.
We become brothers Graham (Mel Gibson) and Merrill Hess, and we
become the children Morgan and Bo.
So much a part of the family are we, that when the beautiful
daughter Bo (played to absolute perfection by the wonderful Abigail
Breslin) isn’t in the shot, even if the moment in the story doesn’t
involve her, we, like good parents and good older brothers, start
searching around the screen for her, just to make sure she’s okay,
even when another member of the family is in danger.
I can’t even begin to explain how Shyamalan is
able to do this, to effect us so thoroughly and completely, but he does
it. And, as he has shown he
can do so astoundingly with Haley Joel Osment, Spencer Treat and now
Rory Culkin (the cool and extremely likable Culkin) and young Ms.
Breslin, he works with the children to bring them to a level of reality
that few, few filmmakers can ever achieve.
And with all this highbrow filmmaking and personal
story telling, M. Night still manages absolutely terrify you… and with
little to no CGI at that! In
keeping with his desire to make a traditional UFO flick, we get rubber
gloves for alien hands… and they are inconceivably horrific.
His use of the camera and his wonderful use of sound and the
wonders of surround sound make the film so real, that if some one accidentally
touched your shoulder at the wrong movement, you might just, in the
theater, lose some semblance of bladder control.
Just might.
So why only a Super? Well, that
might change, when I see it again (and I will), but Shyamalan does
something he’s never done so well or much before and, in keeping with
the realism of this family, accentuates the humor of the film.
Not sitcom humor, mind you, not by any stretch of the definition,
but real, honest-to-goodness, Dad, Uncle, Brother, Sister humor, that is
for the most part, hysterical and well done.
But if feels weird at times. Maybe I’ll get past that with repeated viewings of the
film, but the humor occasionally feels opposite to the intensity,
especially in one scene, when it interrupts Mel’s crying.
And there is no male actor in Hollywood, not even Russell Crowe
who does it pretty damn well, who can cry like Mel Gibson.
None. The man’s
entire face sputters like the agony is literally tearing out his facial
muscles. And in one scene,
that’s cut short by a funny shot.
But that’s the only reason.
Go see this. See
this in the theater as many times as you can with the huge screen, the
surround sound, and the all-important audience.
Than go home and watch The Sixth Sense and follow it with Unbreakable
and maybe, just maybe, if you repeat this once a month or so, will you
be able to tide yourself over until Shyamalan’s next movie.
I don’t think I can.
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