Signs

Signs

I just saw Signs in the second run theatre last week. Overall, I found it "okay." I had heard that it was scary, but I didn't find it scary at all, and the moments that were clearly intended to startle the audience fell flat with me. It was slow and quiet, in classic M Night style, but I found it a bit too slow for my taste, in parts, and at a couple of scenes I nearly expected to fall asleep. At least one audience member agreed with me, as he snored audibly through parts of the movie.

One little thing that bothered me about the movie was how little we learned about the crop circles. They seem like they'll be important, but they're really just there for their visual impact in the beginning of the movie. After that, we learn only the conjecture that they are road signs for the alien invaders. Maybe it wasn't the place of this movie, being told from the point of view of the farmers who don't really know what's going on, to answer questions about the crop circles, but they just left a bunch of unanswered questions in my mind. If the aliens made them, did they use a special machine, or magic powers, or was it just a couple of aliens in the middle of the night with some string and a wooden board? Why was there an alien on the rooftop the night after the crop circle appeared? Was he keeping an eye on it, fearful that a farmer would go out and straighten all the stalks of crops back up?

That's just a nit I'm picking. In general, the performances were fine, and I liked the kids. It just didn't have much emotional impact on me. I didn't feel scared or suspenseful. It was just sort of there.

It may have been my own fault that I found it as slow as I did, as I saw this movie as the second half of a self-created double-feature, with I Spy, which was clearly faster-paced. It's not really fair to compare Signs with Shyamalan's other movies, but the comparison is inevitable, and of the three I've seen, I think I enjoyed Signs the least. Ultimately, it felt like a big, long Twilight Zone episode. I didn't think it was bad, but I didn't think it was that good either.