Signs (film)
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- This article is about the Signs movie. For other references to Signs, see Signs. For other uses of the word sign, see Sign.
Signs (2002) is a film directed by M. Night Shyamalan starring Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix. It was one of the highest grossing films of 2002; it earned US$228 million in the United States, and US$408 million worldwide.
Gibson plays an Episcopal priest who "has been shut down by a devastating life experience." Although the plot revolves around crop circles, its producer, Frank Marshall, said, "It's really about human emotions set in motion by a supernatural event." Shyamalan, who plays a neighbor in the film, was inspired by Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Birds.
The plot
The film is about a rural family that lives on a farm in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. The father, Graham Hess (Gibson), is a former Episcopal priest who has lost his faith after his wife's death in a horrific traffic accident caused by a driver who fell asleep at the wheel (portrayed by Shyamalan). No longer practicing religiously, he lives with his brother, Merrill (Joaquin Phoenix), and his young daughter Bo (Abigail Breslin) and son Morgan (Rory Culkin). Things are fairly steady in his life until a mysterious crop circle appears in his corn field. Its origin and purpose are unknown. Some in the town speculate that it may be a prank; a few believe that it may have been created by intelligent alien lifeforms.
Throughout the film, we learn that Bo has a peculiar aversion to water that is not fresh from the faucet; she constantly says things like "the water is contaminated", and is always asking for a fresh glass of water, leaving behind half-consumed glasses of water around the house (or in whatever dwelling she happens to be).
As the story progresses, it is clear that Hess's farm is under watch, and he and his brother chase a dimly seen person who was spying on them at night from the roof of their barn. The being disappears into the crops, moving faster and disappearing far easier than anyone can explain. Soon Hess and his family are shocked to learn that similar crop circles have suddenly appeared all around the world, in ways too similar, and created too quickly, to be merely a grand, elaborate hoax. Hess tries to distract his family from the facts by taking them into town where they see Ray (M. Night Shyamalan), the man who inadvertently killed Hess's wife.
Merrill, meanwhile visits a U.S Army Recruitment Center, operated by Sergeant First Class Cunningham (Ted Sutton). Cunningham tells Merril that there have been sightings by two families of trespassers in the area, and proposes to Merril a theory that they are reconnaisance missions by the aliens, meant to probe Earth landings sites in preparation for a full scale invasion. It is generally agreed by many that the acting of Cunningham's character is very below average, but Merril's character reactions seem to suggest that this was intentional. This may be another case of the aliens "affecting" or "possessing" creatures on Earth, evidenced earlier by reported unusual behaviour of some townspeople and the behaviour of the German shepherd at the beginning of the movie.
Back home, Morgan is trying to make his sister's baby monitor work, in hope to catch the aliens' signal. Merril tries to convince Morgan that everything is a hoax created by nerds, but it doesn't work at all. As they get out of the car, voices begin to speak from the baby monitor. Suspecting that a higher elevation will make for better reception, Morgan climbs up on the roof of the car with the monitor and figures out there are two of them talking. The baby monitor loses the signal soon after.
As the movie progresses, we see more televised news reports of crop circle sightings around the world, followed by sightings of UFOs, presumed to be of alien origin. The situation turns dangerous when the UFOs become invisible, due to the fact that a bird was observed flying into them and falling; however, the government and news agencies are certain that they still are there. This is followed by sightings of a presumed alien being at a birthday party in Passo Fundo, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. (Many viewers consider this to be the most frightening part of the film, due to the sudden appearance of the creature.)
The movie picks up pace when Graham Hess visits the home of the man who accidentally killed his wife. The emotionally-wounded vet's enigmatic discussion expresses regret for killing Hess's wife, his theories about what is happening, and the cryptic line "Don't open my pantry, Father. I found one of them in there; I locked 'em in.". Upon investigating, Hess finds something intelligent and alive locked in the man's kitchen closet, only dimly seen in the reflection of a knifeblade. When it lunges for him, he cuts off two of the intruder's fingers.
He returns home and sees his family waiting for him on the sofa. Merril tells him that the aliens' skin can change colors, hence their night-time invisibility. Learning from Morgan that they would probably invade if they were hostile, and believing that the aliens are about to invade if they were so, Hess decides to protect his famly with two alternatives: going to the lake, in hope that the aliens do not like water as Ray supposed (Ray pointed out that none of the crop circles have appeared close to bodies of water, so he went to the lake), or staying home. After a controversial "election", they decide to stay home and they board up all doors and windows. While Hess and Merril do this, Morgan and Bo watch the news and find out that there are several UFOs over 274 cities, and growing. They board up the last doors and windows, and go to the family room, waiting for the aliens.
After running all around the house, the aliens climb up to the roof and get in through the attic. When Merrill looks up the stairs to investigate the noises they are making he discovers that they forgot to board up the attic door. As time is short, they decide to get down the basement. Down there, they know that they are trapped, so they try to protect themselves as best as they can. Standing in front of a "grate" which was used to put coal into the basement, Morgan is caught by an alien hand. The flashlight is dropped and the screen goes dark. They race around to cover the grate with anything around and finally are able to do so. When the event has passed, Bo picks up the flashlight and shines it around the basement and discovers Hess lying on the floor with Morgan on the ground. Morgan is having an asthma attack. Hess turns to Merrill and tells him that they don't have Morgan's medicine. As they sit together Hess attempts to calm Morgan down by talking to him. In this scene we discover that Hess still believes in God, albeit with contempt. This is proved by him talking to God saying "I hate you" and "Don't do this to me again".
The next morning, they return upstairs to discover their house ransacked. The local news reports that the aliens invaded the whole world, kidnapping people by gassing (and consequently killing) them. It is never explained what their purpose was, but the director (M. Night Shyamalan) has suggested that they were harvesting humans for food. At this point in the film, all of the aliens appear to have left the planet; humans have discovered a way to defeat them. The aliens have even left their wounded behind. Before they can celebrate, the alien whom Hess mutilated earlier appears and takes his son into it's arms. It sprays a poisonous gas from its arm, which we now understand to be the way that it attacks and kills people.
Hess has a flashback of his wife dying and then hears the line "swing away". Merrill, a former baseball player, begins to attack the alien with a bat after Hess tells him to "swing away" (repeating to him his wife's final words). The alien falls backwards into a half-full glass of water that the daughter left out, and it burns through his flesh. Knowing his weakness, Merrill keeps on attacking him until enough water hits and kills him. Also, they discover that because of the asthma attack, Morgan's lungs were closed off and the gas did not penetrate. Hess regains his faith because he feels that the last words of his wife were a message from God. He also believes that the aversion to stale water, the asthma, and Merrill's hard but inaccurate swinging ability had all turned out to be blessings in disguise. The final scene is shown as wintertime with Hess dressed as a priest, getting ready, presumably, for church.
Structure
The story is presented chronologically except for the scenes detailing the death of Graham's wife. There are several of these flashbacks, sometimes repeating the same footage, but progressively revealing more details..The film's dramatic structure resembles others of its genre (especially Hitchcock's The Birds) but with some surprises, notably its exploration of the deeper psychological and religious aspects of human-felt terror. One of the first images we see is a cross-shaped "clean spot" on the wall of Graham's bedroom. We infer that the cross was removed when the death of Graham's wife precipitated his crisis of faith, yet its image remains--people can't stop calling him "Father", though he asks them not to, and a girl in town insists he hear her confession. Most poignantly, throughout the building terror his family looks to him for pastoral reassurance, which he can't (or won't) provide.
The suspense builds slowly at first, though not without foreboding (early on, the family dog is skewered with a barbeque fork). Graham insists the family go about its business normally, but the children quickly size up the impending alien invasion, finally confirmed by worldwide television coverage. A pivotal dramatic moment is the late-night whispered exchange between Graham and Merrill, in which each stakes out his philosophical position on the impending tragedy. Here the double meaning of the movie's title is revealed: the crop circles are signs, but so are premonitions from God. Graham no longer believes in signs.
The twist at the end of Signs is a little different from other Shyamalan films, like The Sixth Sense. In those films, some important fact is withheld from the audience until the end. Here, it is the meaning of the facts that is revealed. The last five minutes or so are exuberantly thrilling. As the family battles the now-visible enemy, the disconnected details of the story--Morgan's asthma, Bo's aversion to stale water, Colleen's apparently nonsensical last words--all come to rapid-fire convergence, the goal being not only the family's survival, but Graham's redemption.
Criticisms
Some of the more directly sci-fi-related aspects have come under heavy criticism from science fiction fans (see external links). The concept of an alien species expert in space travel and invisibility, but unable to protect itself from water, especially when traveling to a planet that is mostly water, or to conceive of or use technological weapons, open doors, etc., is held by many to be highly unrealistic. These aliens have mastered inter-galactic travel, are able to wage total war on mankind but can not detect one of the more simple molecules in existence is fairly implausible. Additionally, water vapor in the atmosphere should have killed or seriously maimed the alien invaders.
A possible defense against the above criticism holds that, as extra-terrestrials have not been observed, there is no reason to believe that their evolution, culture, and home environment would be similar enough to ours to allow them to adequately anticipate human physiology or inventions, or the terrestrial environment. This argument falls down when the likely evolution, adaptability and planning capabilities of any possible planet-to-planet raider species are borne in mind, especially since an entirely dissimilar species (i.e. one from a physically and chemically distinct environment) would most likely not find either our species or our planet "useful" in either a biological or a 'civilizational' sense. Another theory is that the aliens are engaging in a ritual similar to counting coup — that is, they deliberately choose a world on which they would be very vulnerable and chose to attack without high-tech weapons in order to demonstrate personal bravery or some other character trait prized in their culture.
Also, while this is mostly a valid argument in terms of the story depicted in Signs, it can be argued that the film's purpose is to entertain, and if a film does not reasonably conform to the conceptual expectations of its audience, however unrealistic, some of that entertainment value will be diminished. It can also be further argued that the aliens are a plot device to allow Mel Gibson's character to regain his faith, and that Signs is not necessarily a Science-Fiction film and as such there is no need for the plot to have much of a basis in scientific fact.
Still others argue that, although no evidence is given in the film, the aliens may be desperate and using Earth as a last ditch effort for some unspoken plan. This, of course, requires faith in a theory which is not stated in either the film, commentary, or press. Supporters of this theory often use vague evidence reflected from the film, such as observations that the aliens "appear weak" or "don't appear to have a solid plan." Critics of this theory have jokingly stated, "maybe the aliens are just idiots."
Critics claim that a lapse of logic occurs when, as Graham's family emerges from the basement and hears the news reports of the aliens' retreat, the voice-over from the newsman says that the aliens are defeated by "a primitive method" and no further details were available. Obviously, it's important to the movie that the true key to defeating the aliens is not revealed until Merrill starts swinging away, but for critics this news report fails on a purely logical level. According to critics whoever knew how to kill the aliens would have said "Water kills them," not "it's a primitive method," and the news outlets would have that information. Other viewers believe that in the chaos of a planet wide attack, details coming from far across the planet would necessarily be obscured, incorrect, or missing key information.
Trivia
- The Brazilian birthday party scene resembles the purported real life events of the Varginha incident, and may be based on them. Film critics noted that the video of the alien is vaguely reminiscent of the infamous Patterson-Gimlin film from 1967.
- The part of the movie where the family hides in the basement is very similar to a scene from H.G. Wells's novel The War of the Worlds, in which the narrator hides in the cellar of an abandoned house. In both stories, the aliens understand doors, and attempt to open them. In The War of the Worlds, the alien opens the cellar door but does not succeed in finding the protagonist. In Signs, the alien attempts to open the basement door, but Graham holds it shut. The basement scene is also a nod to Night of the Living Dead in which its protagonist (Duane Jones) escapes to the basement in a last ditch effort to avoid the zombies, who try desperately to break inside like the aliens do in Signs, as the movie also takes place within the countryside, in a country house.
- The scene in the cornfield resembles a similar scene in E.T. where the last shot is a swing swaying from being bumped by an alien.
- The first scenes shot on this movie were of the incident with Graham's wife the night she dies. This was filmed on September 12, 2001, the day after the terrorist attacks on New York; before they commenced filming, the film crew held an all-night vigil to honor the victims of the attack.
- The rescue squad used in the film is not from Newtown, PA, but rather from Bristol, PA a bit south. The reason for this is they are the only squad in Bucks County whose ambulances have markings needed for the film. All other squads in the area have the township they are from written on the side. The Bristol Squad (#143) have only "Bucks County Rescue Squad" written on the side, this allows for the accident to happen anywhere in the county, and allow for the proper amount of time to pass before Gibson's character arrives on scene. Another film by Shyamalan, Lady in the Water, is filmed in the same area the rescue squad services (Levittown, PA).
- In the movie, there is the line "there are no coincidences, only chance and fate exist". This is from the book "The language of Fear" by Del James on the page just before the first story.
Deleted scenes
On the DVD, there are some deleted scenes:
- Flashbacks 1 and 2
- :Two scenes with Graham's wife. In one, she dances with him, in other, she is sitting with a toddler Morgan and baby Bo in a rocking chair while Graham watches.
- The dead bird:''
- The attic door and the third story
See also
External links
| Movies by M. Night Shyamalan |
| Praying with Anger | Wide Awake | The Sixth Sense | Unbreakable | Signs | The Village | Lady in the Water |
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