Review of signs (2014) by Victor T — 28 Jul 2014

After the phenomenal "The Sixth Sense" and the overlooked "Unbreakable", M Night Shyamalan gave us an unconventional alien invasion/drama film that has divided audiences, mainly because of his trademark twist ending.

Graham Hess was a priest but he lost his fate when his wife Colleen died in a car accident, he lives in the Bucks County with his brother Merrill, his daughter Bo and his asthmatic son Morgan. One day they discover a crop circle in his field and they later find out that crops circles are appearing around the world and reports that strange lights are appearing in the sky, thus the world knows that aliens arrived to Earth.

"Signs" has every element that you would expect from Shyamalan early career: A well done atmosphere, actors giving solid performances, a creative take on certain genre (this time is the sci-fi genre), a memorable score by James Newton Howard, well done imagery and themes and his trademark "twist ending" that tries too hard to outshine the one in "The Sixth Sense" but it also shows that his style is getting repetitive, predictable and not as engaging as before, it really shows the beginning of Shyamalan´s downfall. But even with those key elements that enhance the film, it has bigger problems than its predecessors: the characters are underdeveloped; there are some scenes where the dialog falls into absurdity; while the story mostly does a great job in keeping you engage in the suspense, there are annoyances that really take you out of the experience and Shyamalan trademark twist ending is dumb and not that big of a shock since it was said early in the film.

Overall, "Signs" it's an excellent suspense film that is filled phenomenal elements with a little absurdity. Don't let that ending ruin all the greatness that was done earlier. Arguably Shyamalan´s last good film.