There Have Been Signs
Signs (2002).
They’re out there, but do we care? M. Night Shyamalan did.
The U.S. government had a revelatory hearing where they *gasp* confirmed that aliens are real! Cue the crickets as well as not a single American soul giving a fuck. Did they think we didn’t know? It wasn’t really a big reveal to be informed that the government has known about the existence of aliens for a long time. Can’t they instead just help us out with inflation and the crushing cost of living?
It’s kind of funny that a couple of weeks before the big news I sat down to watch the 2002 movie Signs, starring Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix. The movie is about a worldwide alien invasion where Gibson plays Graham Hess, the patriarch of his family, as well as a former priest. Phoenix plays Graham’s younger brother, Merrill, who also lives with the family, and helps to fight off the aliens when they come-a-knockin’.
M. Night Shyamalan is the writer and director of the movie; he was hot off the heels of his ’99 success with The Sixth Sense when Signs was released, and it turned out to be another banger in the theaters for him. The movie still holds up, for the most part.
Here’s what doesn’t work anymore with this film, and it’s not that big of a deal: the CGI is dated. Obviously, audiences today would look at the scene where the remaining alien is defeated by Merrill and giggle at the effects; I know I did when the glass of water fell on its shoulder and burned it. Luckily, the only real CGI in the film is used at the end and it’s minimal. Perhaps Shyamalan knew that these effects wouldn’t hold up and therefore decided to use it sparingly.
Here’s what still works: it’s a great story. Shyamalan is an excellent storyteller. He mixes both horror and heartfelt in the same bowl; he even throws in tiny bits of subtle comedy. Not only that, but he could’ve made this film more gory and horrifying by showing the bloody mess the aliens left behind after the invasion, but he didn’t. It would’ve been easy to show the worldwide devastation that the beings left in their wake, but that’s not his style.
Shyamalan is an ingenious builder of suspense and uses psychological terror to keep his audiences on edge. There are too many scenes to mention in this movie, but one that stands out is when Graham’s son is having an asthma attack while the aliens are trying to invade their home and kill them. It’s terrifying on two levels: the aliens are literally outside the door desperately trying to get in, and on top of that, the son might die from his medical condition. It’s like the family is being attacked from the outside and inside, and the moment is intense!
Another thing that still works is the fact that this could happen. So far, most alien stories from people around the world don’t involve them taking over whole societies; they just abduct people here and there, but that’s not to say that it couldn’t be plausible.
The whole movie sort of kicks off with a crop circle being created on a field right outside of Graham’s property. Crop circles have been well documented over the past 50 years or more, and most people attribute them to alien spacecraft landing on Earth. The film hypothesizes that the alien’s have run out of resources on the planet(s) they come from and are here to take ours in a violent fashion.
If aliens are humans evolved, or a species that has been around for centuries, even milenia longer than us, it’s very possible that Earth might appeal to them in terms of our limited (thanks, dumb humans) natural resources. Let’s face it, they wouldn’t invade because we’re geniuses, and they want our brains. They would just want our precious minerals and whatnot.
Some might say, aliens schmaliens, what’s the big whoop? Others might be quivering in their boots imagining the terror of being invaded. But Shyamalan, he was thinking about telling a riveting story that holds up over time, one that draws on our fears, our curiosity about alien life, and what we would do if an attack were to ever happen.