Signs

An above-average thriller (a variation of Independence Day) in the typical chatty style of Shyalaman that generates an unsettling atmosphere from the beginning to the end, where things fall considerably apart due to the not very good look of the aliens. Mel Gibson carries the film on his shoulders, he hardly ever leaves the screen. Signs doesn’t get a full score mostly because of the ending, which is way too American and doesn’t fit the film’s atmosphere. (30/12/2007)

Shyamalan at his absolute peak – which would be followed by nothing but a deep plunge downwards. If you don't count the purely commercial and popcorn flick Independence Day, Signs is clearly the best and most powerful film about contact with evil alien worlds. An emotionally very impressive and tense movie that builds up the tension until the final scene in the cellar, which would bring beads of sweat even to Hitchcock's forehead – you really don't get that kind of palpable and real fear in every film. The growing sense of unease is greatly deepened by Howard's excellent soundtrack and the cinematography capturing the unpleasant setting of a remote farm surrounded by corn. Gibson in the lead role is great as always, but Phoenix and Culkin don't lag behind him and prove their immense talent. It's not yet worthy of a full rating, but I'll always enjoy such a genre candy. 85% (10/02/2013)

I remember when I was small going to take a look at a crop circle that appeared just off the road to Skalky. I know how terrified I was but at the same time I was really fascinated. A weird feeling. I still remember it somehow. Inside the circle the stalks of grain, I don’t know what sort, seemed empty inside, cracked and dry. I even took one of them home with me. To this day they haven’t worked out who did it or why. Just that the night before that, just before dawn apparently the sky turned yellow. Dark yellow. Dad woke up early and saw it. Now where the field used to be there’s a “millionaire’s quarter" (houses for the rich, a friend of my sister’s supposedly lives there) and a new road that leads to Walmart. Every time I pass by, I remember standing there. Inside that circle. A weird feeling... (02/01/2007)

Can humor go hand in hand with slowly built suspense and a thick, disconcerting atmosphere? Can you combine a sci-fi movie about invasion with questions of faith and destiny? Isn’t there an unwritten rule that “the dog never dies"? If Shyamalan had come up with this concept a decade later, everybody would have laughed at him. But he came up with it at a time when he was unarguably still at his creative zenith and managed to concentrate his talents on making one of the top thrillers of the beginning of the twenty-first century. It has just one weak spot: the very end when he proves once and for all whether or not he was one of those people who believes/hopes that everything happens for a specific reason. I’m not one of them and so in such a well-thought out movie, which to a certain extent Signs is, I felt that the ending (but not necessarily the overall message) was really unsatisfying and, to a certain extent, cheap. If it had been less ambitious and made do with just three (?) days of the first contact through the eyes of a regular family, it would have been more than enough for a good movie. (20/11/2003)

In some ways a very funny update of the invasion sci-fi genre, in some ways unpleasantly claustrophobic, in some ways pleasantly exaggerated (the hats), but in other respects completely burdened by trying to go beyond and show something more than an intimate story of a family crisis surrounded by mysterious signs from above. I enjoyed watching it as one of the variants of the classic narrative of re-establishing the authority of a father through a disaster. In this respect, it is slightly reminiscent of Spielberg's War of the Worlds. However, Steven is a much better narrator and entertainer, without lagging behind Shyamalan in terms of thought (it’s not really even possible). (13/06/2013)