‘Signs’

Good acting makes the impossible feel plausible in M. Night Shyamalan’s fifth film, shot on location in Bucks County.   [PG-13]

By: Elise Nakhnikian
   Disney is pumping out the previews and promos for Signs like oil through the Alaska pipeline. Writer/director/producer M. Night Shyamalan even made the cover of Newsweek, which anointed him "our next great storyteller…akin to the young Spielberg."
   That’s a hefty load of hype to pile onto an aging wunderkind (he’s 31) — and that’s
a shame. Signs is a pretty good B movie. It sustains a steady sense of dread, delivers several laughs
to break the tension and contains some good acting. But it’s hardly the second coming.
   On a DVD commentary for another of his movies, Shyamalan says his ambition as a director is to "make feature-length ‘Twilight Zones.’ " He far exceeded that ambition with The Sixth Sense, an ingenious, original thriller, but his next effort just barely achieved it. The story of a man who discovers that he has the powers of a comic-book hero, Unbreakable was incongruously ponderous and somber.

Mel Gibson (center) and his two children, played by Rory Culkin and Abigail Breslin, prepare for a possible alien invasion in Signs.

   Signs is the fifth movie Shyamalan has directed, and he seems to be developing a formula that suits him. Like The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, Signs is a thriller set in the Philadelphia area that revolves around two axes: a supernatural miracle and a man’s struggle to connect with his family. It features central roles for child actors and a Hitchcockian cameo by the director. And, despite its willfully naive belief in magic and middle-class America, it has its dark side, including fatal wrecks and other carnage.
   Fortunately, it doesn’t take itself too seriously. A 21st-century version of compelling but hokey ’50s thrillers like Them! and The Thing, Signs scares you only to make you feel safer than ever, thanks to an ineffectual menace, stalwart heroes and a simplistic message (Have faith!) that’s all but spelled out in block letters over the closing credits.
   When we meet Graham Hess (Mel Gibson) and his brother Merrill (Joaquin Phoenix), they’re edgy as new razor blades. Even the dogs are behaving strangely, "almost like they act when there’s a predator around," as the friendly local cop (Cherry Jones) helpfully points out. Graham’s wife, we soon learn, recently died in an accident. Merrill has come to help out for a while — and Graham, uncharacteristically, needs a lot of help. Not only does he have two young kids, 5-year-old Bo (Abigail Breslin) and her not-much-older brother Morgan (Rory Culkin), but he’s a minister who has lost his faith in God.
   But that’s not what’s bothering the dogs. Someone has been making crop circles at Hess’s ur-American Bucks County spread — and at many other sites across the world. There seem to be intruders everywhere, though nobody can quite see them. Could it be aliens?
   This being a Shyamalan movie, you can be pretty sure the answer is yes, so the suspense lies mainly in wondering whether we’ll get to see the aliens and what they will do. This is the kind of script where, as soon as you learn that Morgan has asthma or Merrill used to be a pro ball player, you suspect it’ll figure into the plot later on — and you’re right. But not everything is so formulaic. The way the family gets its information about the alien invasion is more Sept. 11 than War of the Worlds.
   Confined to the farm, the adults try to shield the kids from the Mobius strip of information on TV and radio, but it keeps pulling everyone in. The family gawks at what passes for news: a few oft-repeated facts surrounded by endless speculation, rumors and hype ("Either this is one of the most elaborate hoaxes ever created or, basically, it’s for real," one newscaster solemnly declares).
   Good acting also makes the impossible feel plausible. Playing a depressed and angry man,
Gibson is subdued and stiff. Even the lines in his face seem deeper, making him look a little like a younger
Alan Bates. The supporting cast is generally strong as well, though Shyamalan has stretched his cameo into
a central role that he can’t carry off. Breslin’s Bo is the real thing, her doll-like features conveying an
intensity and range of emotions reminiscent of Drew Barrymore in E.T. Phoenix (Gladiator’s hissing Emperor
Commodus) reminds us how compelling his tormented sensitivity can be when he acts like a recognizable human
being. And Cherry Jones (Vivian’s thin-lipped mother in Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood) is excellent,
as always, as a small-town cop straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting.
   But the real draw is the aliens, and they’re disappointing. An early glimpse on the TV news, in what’s supposed to be a videotape shot at a child’s birthday party, is properly ominous. But when we finally get our close encounter, the creature is almost as silly-looking as the Hershey’s Kisses-looking tinfoil caps the kids wear "so the aliens can’t read our minds." Maybe the cheesiness is intentional, part of the homage to B movies. Or maybe there just wasn’t enough money left, after paying for all that marketing, to spring for state-of-the-art special effects.
Rated PG-13. Contains some frightening moments.