Give Shyamalan credit for taking a big concept and dealing with it effectively on a microcosmic level.
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M. Night Shyamalan's "Signs" is an interesting film if for no other reason than it takes a topic normally mined for sci-fi effects or slasher-style cheap scares and turns it into a reality-based tale of an ordinary Pennsylvania family just trying to cope . . . with an alien invasion. It's the low-key flipside of "Independence Day," and probably closer to what the experience would really be like for millions of families across the world. I mean, would your first impulse, knowing that an alien fleet is hovering "out there" and alien forms have been spotted out the ground, be to run screaming through the streets in panic and get in your car to head for who knows where, or would it be to hunker down and try to think things through?
That's what Graham Hess (Mel Gibson) and his family do. When they discover a 500-foot crop circle in their field one day, they phone Officer Paski (Cherry Jones), who was also the one to tell Graham that his wife had been virtually severed in half by a pick-up truck. And that's why Father Hess (we're never quite sure of the denomination) quit the church and isn't sure now if he even believes in God, much less aliens. But the proof is right there in his field, and, as he soon learns by watching the television, in fields everywhere across the world. Dad, it's like "War of the Worlds,, the boy says in a near-whisper, as if the thing is too incredible to even speak about.
This is a quiet and deliberately paced story, but one which still manages to sustain a believable tension--partly because of Shyamalan's writing and direction, and partly because his core group of actors manage to hover as close to reality as the aliens come to surreality. In a way, the overall feeling of the film isn't far-removed from something like "Panic Room," which saw a flinching Jodie Foster hole up in her home while intruders skulk about and threaten to harm her. The sci-fi aspect is really deemphasized that much.
Gibson handles his part with uncharacteristic understatement, and so, for that matter, does Joaquin Phoenix as his brother, Merrill, who moved in with the family after the tragedy. If you had told me going into it that these two would seem perfectly ordinary as perfectly ordinary brothers and not try to turn the role into something more, I would have raised at least one eyebrow. Maybe both (one seems too evil). But the two of them are as everyday people as an actor can seem to the real everyday people sitting in the cheap seats.
"Signs" was Abigail Breslin's debut, and as Hess's five-year-old daughter, Bo, she's an interesting screen presence even if you didn't know that she evolved into a young actress who would earn a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her work in "Little Miss Sunshine." It might be a bit of a gimmick to have this little girl have an eccentricity about water that makes her leave half-glasses all over the house, but with a matter-of-factness in her delivery she pulls it off. Rory Culkin also holds his own as Bo's older brother, an asthmatic who puffs more than a magic dragon. Oddly enough, those two idiosyncracies are the most heavy-handed Shyamalan gets with the script, because he showcases them so often you know that each is going to come into play somehow. The pacing, too, can seem excessively ponderous, especially in the early going. Overall, though, the film works on the level of ordinary people dealing with extraordinary circumstances. This is basically a five-character ensemble film, and all of them make us buy into the Hess family's experience. Even the humorous moments (as when Uncle Merrill and the kids make aluminum foil hats because they think it will keep the aliens from reading their minds) are accomplished with classic understatement.
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[release]23389[/release]