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Review by Frank Wilkins

500-foot crop circles appear on the farm of Graham Hess, a former Episcopalian reverend already questioning his faith and beliefs after the recent death of his wife in a fatal car accident. His brother Merrill (Joaquin Phoenix) joins him on the farm and together they learn to cope with the realities of raising two small children without a mother. We learn that crop circles are appearing all over the world and an apparent alien invasion is underway. Dismissing the crop circles as merely a hoax, Graham tries to move on with life, but things get worse, leaving him to further question his faith and family love and to eventually fight for his family's life.

Rather than involving us with the world's reaction to the fledgling invasion, writer, director M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable) prefers to delve on character development that weaves the fabric of the Hess family. We learn that fate and faith are very critical elements to a family's love for one another and every action and emotion that we experience are not random occurrences; they happen for a reason.

Shyamalan ups the ante in filmmaking and story telling with Signs. Almost every detail is heeded and wonderful symbolic imagery is sprinkled throughout the experience. From overhead aerial shots of the city of Bucks, Pennsylvania that resemble crop circle patterns, to star and moon decorum in the household, Shyamalan has learned to infuse the audience with the building-blocks of fear that further lead us to tremble in our seats at merely the rustle of the wind or the jingle of a wind chime.

One particular aspect of filmmaking that has nearly wrecked the scary movie genre for me is the advent of computer-generated special effects. Don't get me wrong; I'm a computer/techno geek so I most definitely respect the medium, but the ability to create realistic looking monsters, creatures and otherwise invisible figments of the imagination has nearly eradicated the idea that less is more. Alfred Hitchcock developed the idea that terror and fear is more effective when manifested in one's own mind rather than what appears on the screen. Shyamalan has perfected this idea, and in Signs the tension and suspense come from silence and stillness rather than vision and trickery. The viewer's fright is developed from what we don't see, rather than what we do.

One scene in particular, lasting approximately 30 seconds, which felt like a lifetime, consisted of a still shot looking up the cellar stairway at the kitchen window. Nothing moving. No sound. Just sunlight shining through the window. The suspense was tremendous. Shyamalan directs with a soft hand, letting the camera and the sound (sometimes silence) tell the story. He doesn't lead the audience; he merely points out the possible steps to take and lets the viewer dig his/her own hole of terror. To one viewer the terror may be a leg disappearing into the cornfield, to another it may be the wind, and to yet another it may be an ex-spouse. The point is, this lack of over-exposure to computer-generated creatures is way more effective in generating fear and terror.

Signs is a near-perfect cinematic exercise in instinctual and gutteral fear. I only hope that the success of this picture will inspire other screenwriters to understand that sometimes, less is more.

Frank Wilkins

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