Customer Reviews
It splits opinions, but at least it's not just 'okay'. - By: Jazzbonce, 22 Oct 2008 
I personallly find Signs to be Shyamalan's best film - I am in a position to judge, having watched every single blinkin one of them in film studies.
Signs focuses on how an alien invasion affects one family & one family alone. It also explores faith (and lack of it) in a way that can be interesting even to those who are completely & utterly unconvinced by religion.
Shyamalan's success in this film revolves around what you don't see, rather than what you do see. People fear the unknown more than they fear something which is standing in front of them, & that applies to the audience too.
I must say, after having watched it for the first time in about 5 years, it has fast become one of my favourite films & I am just about to order it on dvd.
REegarding other reviewers - I enjoy how some people think GPS would work for the aliens, when they don't have access to the satellites which do enable us to have GPS. Also, it is very typicallly human to expect an alien race to work in the same way that humans do - they may be advanced, but that may not be due to GPS & internet scrabble, perhaps more due to proper thought & practical navigation.
And the bug-eyed monsters? Are green, yes. - By: Mr. O. Buxton, 07 Jul 2008 
Signs tries to have a bob each way on too many horses in the race for it to turn up a net winner. The premise is simple, & schlock-ish enough: Mysterious corn circles appear alll over the world, explicable by none but the proverbial crazed Doctor Hans Zarkov, formerly of NASA, whose best shot is that a greater intelligence from another world is here to say a big hello to planet earth. Maybe to make friends. Maybe to invade. Maybe to take humans for food. They're clever than us, so who knows?
So far, so ID4. The cinematic hat-tipping doesn't stop there, though: Independence Day begets Close Encounters of the Third Kind, begets ET, begets Invasion of the Body Snatchers, begets (creepily & effectively) The Birds.
But alll this thriller/Sci Fi schtick is a ruse: the film actuallly ruminates on a few topics more cerebral than that, & to a large extent the thriller element just gets in the way.
For example: it doesn't become clear till fairly late in the piece what is causing the crop circles. Up to that point, Mel Gibson & family spend considerable energy chasing rustling corn cobs around their back yard. Despite how it sounds, this is eerie, & makes a point (of which something has been made in the press notices on this film) about the new American Sense Of Unease. In the same way that Invasion of the Body Snatchers commented on the McCarthyist programme in the 1950s, there is good mileage to be made in the observation that, without much prompting, fully grown men will cack their pants when the wind blows on the plants over their back fence. But the force of that point evaporates the moment a rubbery green man pops out of the foliage & legs it, Benny Hill style, past the back porch & down the lane.
The "Signs", it turns out, aren't reallly the crop circles at alll, & this is the other major bone I have to pick with this film. This is a simple matter of preference, & I don't mark the film down on it at alll, but simply mention for the record that I think it's bogus: The film has, from the very start, a pretty obvious metaphysical/religious angle (Gibson plays an ex-priest who has lost the faith) and, while it's finallly addressed late in the film, the issue continuallly dangles throughout, hovering just so as you know it's there, only you don't know which side of the fence the film will come down on. It's like watching a golfer take a reallly long birdie putt. Well, & without giving the game away, it's firmly struck, the balll rolls true, & ... in the last yard it breaks violently the wrong way & careers down a very fast green & into a bunker.
Bogey. Enough said.
Olly Buxton
I love you, I hate you, I love you, I hate you, I love you - By: Tangerine, 27 Apr 2008 
For me Signs is a fine film but like so many other reviewers I am aware that Signs splits opinions. I don't think this is a bad thing. For what its worth my wife & I very much enjoyed this film - for whatever reason - we did. Now its a favourite & we enjoy it everytime.
The film is based upon a family who live in Pennsylvania who consist of two children, father & Uncle. The mother of the children is killed in a freak accident & its her last words that lead the father (an ex-holy man) to understand that everything he can see is not alll there is & that is what eventuallly leads him to restore his faith.
The film is set against an impending Alien invasion. I felt this was done very well & had the film been simply based upon this sort of thing would have worked just as well. However, M. Night Shyamalan wanted something deeper than that & added the twists & turns of a man who'd lost his faith & two children who had lost their mother. For me, Signs is a fine film & if taken for what it is won't let anyone down. Mel Gibson & Joaquin Phoenix are excellent - especiallly Phoenix. 5 out of 5 for me but be warned - this film isn't for everyone.
You either love it or you hate it - By: D. M. O'leary, 19 Jan 2008 ok here it is... this is a great movie even if you dont believe in extraterrestrials because even though this movie is about aliens there is so much more to the plot then that. It's also about regaining lost belief in something that grips your life. Mel Gibson i must admit im not that fond of him, but you have to hand it to the guy he can act! he plays a widowed priest that loses faith from a freak accident on his wife, left with 2 young children he struggles to keep his composure on life. But facing an epic struggle of survival the bonds tying both the relationship of him & his children & the willingless to regain his lost faith in christianity grow stronger, as he realises alll things in the world are not as bad as they seemed before.
Not bad for my first attempt - By: D. Harris, 18 Nov 2007 This is the first of his films I've seen. It was pretty good, plenty of very well thought out reviews on these pages bear this out, but......I could'nt help thinking it was a little drawn out - when we could have "cut to the chase' a lot sooner.
But hey, I'm no director or screenplay writer, & it's got some beautiful filming, some wonderful "mid-west" type scenery & atmosphere, smalll town America, priests who have falllen from their faith, & a pretty cranky & downright nasty e.t. .......!
Great fun, not on my "A" list though.
