Most helpful customer reviews
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3.0 out of 5 stars
Science Fiction takes a back seat to character development, Nov 16 2008
There is a spoiler in this review, so please don't read on if you think it may spoil the enjoyment of the film.
Signs presents itself as a science fiction film with horror and suspense along with a dabble of personal struggles with faith. The film is quite good at developing the characters in the film, particularly that of Mel Gibson ( who gives another fine performance)and the small boy played by Rory Culkin , and sets about an effective mood of foreboding and dread.
The problem I have with this film is that the Aliens are complete idiots. They behave like the barbarians at the gate during Roman or medieval times, yet with less intelligence or common sense. They are supposed to be Aliens who have mastered star travel, building starships and such, yet were inspired to invade a blue planet even though water is poison to them and actually acts like an acid when in contact with them. Duh? Need to make crop circles in order to navigate around the planet!! They seem to not know how to use weapons, preferring hand to "hand combat" like wild animals!! They invade a planet, yet do not take out infrastructure sites such as power plants, yet they manage to take out the TV stations and radio!! They like to hang out in kitchens and houses it seems like bear cubs, making a mess of things, and even allow themselves to get locked up in a pantry? These are just some examples of how idiotic and incompetent these Aliens are. Even the one example in which we see a so called "face to fac battle", the Alien just stands there and gets battered with a swinging bat. How could such Aliens get to another solar system, when it is unlikely they could figure out how to get to the next village.
As usual, if you put your brain away, this film can be enjoyed for the characters and suspense of the film, since it is a well done film in this respect. But for me personally, I expect a little more substance to a science fiction themed film.
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2.0 out of 5 stars
Disapointing and not scary, Feb 11 2007
Quickly: disapointing, not that scary.
Summary: Priest loses wife, then loses faith and is left raising 2 kids with the help of his brother. Creepy things happen, it ends up it's aliens, they all hide, then fight one alien and learn that there reall is a god.
The Good: I actually liked the little girl, she was just creepy enough and not annoying. I thought Gibson did a great job playing the lost father. I loved the fact that this movie used The Hidden Fortress plot device. It told the story from the eyes of its lowest characters. A huge war is going on and instead of seeing the war we see 4 people watching the news about the War. The alien was rather cool once you got to it, I loved the camo effect.
The Bad: It just wasn't really that scary or clever. I expected way more from this (as I am pretty sure everyone else did when it came out). There was no plot twist at the end, that made me re-think the whole movie. There wasn't really even a 'jump' worthy cheap scare. It just didn't have what I expected in it.
The Ugly: Hidding in a boarded up house and then in a celler is the stuff of Zombie movies not Alien Invasion movies. The movie builds up so much suspense of the coming invasion, and we get to see people fumbling around in the dark and one alien.
Overall: this was pretty disapointing. Amusingly we owned this for a few years, and haven't watched it since most of our DVD watching starts during dinner. We didn't want to watch a horror while eating. Well we could have watched this one. It's just not scary. Not being scary I at least expected some big revalation at the end that made you think, a "What he was a Ghost?!?" moment. Technically there was one, but it just didn't work for me.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Signs, Jun 19 2006
Living in a country farmhouse out in the open cornfields stretching as far as the eye can see in rural Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia, Graham Hess (Mel Gibson), newly a widower and a former reverend, his younger brother, former Minor Leagues baseball superstar Merrill (Joaquin Phoenix), who quit playing baseball after he beat the infamous strike-out record, and Graham's two children---his very serious twelve-year-old son, Morgan (Rory Culkin), and his adorable little six-year-old daughter, Bo (Abigail Breslin).
Merrill originally moved in with his older brother and his niece and nephew to help Graham recover from the death of his beloved wife, Colleen, six months ago when Ray Reddy, a veterinarian, fell asleep at the wheel at night and accidentally crashed Colleen into a nearby tree. Merrill also came to help be something of a second parent to the two children. Life out in the Pennsylvania countryside for the Hesses is relatively normal, until their dogs, Houdini and Isabelle---along with many others animals in the area---begin acting strange, violent. But the strangest of all the occurrences is the mysterious crop circles miraculously forming in their cornfields.
As Graham struggles to make his own relationship with Morgan stronger, as it has been failing ever since Colleen's tragic death, the skeptical part of the world struggles to come to terms with the fact that aliens are coming to this planet... and fast. While Morgan truly believes that the extraterrestrial are coming, convincing both Merrill and Bo with Bo's old baby monitory in which they pick of alien signals, and using a textbook written all about other life-forms, Graham desperately clings to the belief that this is just an extremely elaborate global hoax.
But soon, more proof of aliens shows itself to the Hesses, and Graham begrudgingly comes to believe that the aliens are coming to Earth... Now, the only thing that the Hesses find themselves wondering is whether or not the aliens arriving are friendly or hostile---and if they are hostile, what will happen to the entire planet if the aliens defeat the whole human race?
M. Night Shyamalan is an especially gifted director and producer, and, having produced one of the greatest psychological horrors/suspense films in recent years, The Sixth Sense, I had very high expectations for this movie as well, which were almost fully succeeded. My only complaint about the movie is that it lacks real logic that most sci-fi movies have; if these aliens are so intelligent and intellectual that they have the powers of inter-galactic travel, then why in the world do they have such horrible trouble trying to open simple pantry doors? Still, the movie shows quite a greatly realistic view on what could actually happen to norman people if aliens invaded the planet, and provides a poignant look at faith. Mel Gibson excellently portrays the faithless former reverend who lost faith in God when his wife was killed but later regained it when his son was saved. But Joaquin Phoenix especially shines here as Graham's younger brother, who must become heroic in the face of danger. Abigail Breslin is often hilarious as the adorable little girl spouting the film's comic relief. Rory Culkin also exemplifies the role of a serious young boy having relationship issues with his father, but those issues are resolved when they must come together once and for all. Though not the best movie focusing on "what's really out there," Signs is a great film that shows what undying faith can help you to do in the face of seemingly inescapable danger.
Highly recommended!
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