Signs, a movie that could have chosen to be one of the spookiest summer movies, chose to take a lesser grade in spookiness to increase its overall success. For once we get to look at an alien invasion in an honest way, from the point of view of a family just trying to survive it, instead of from the hero’s view of saving the earth.
The movie starts out in the morning when Mel Gibson, who plays Graham, learns his crops have been ruined and attributes it to the locals once again. The only thing out of the ordinary is that animals have become more violent. That night we watch Graham, and his brother Merrill, played by Joaquin Phoenix, trying to scare off the local troublemakers who have woken up his daughter. As we eventually learn, it was an alien that was haunting his house and destroying his crops, but the question turns to why.
Suspense slowly builds throughout the movie as we become more attached to the characters and slowly learn what is going on around them at the same pace they do. Our suspense is mostly based on the fact that we start their nightmare with them, and get to know them as the movie progresses. Surprisingly funny, the movie became more entertaining as their superstitions come into play—nothing can be funnier than watching Graham, a quiet minister, walk in and find his brother and two kids with aluminum foil cones on their heads to prevent the aliens from reading their minds.
Though I was a little skeptical of seeing this movie, my mind was completely changed after I saw it. The only disappointing aspect of this movie was the sub-plot about an ex-minister’s loss of belief in God and his return to faith after his wife’s death. The ending was much less than exciting, and felt separate from the movie itself—it could have been left out. The actors all did a great job of giving their characters a believable personality and filling out the roles. All in all, it is a perfectly enjoyable movie, and is worth the money to watch it on the big screen.
