Stop 'Signs'
When symbolism attacks.

By Cheryl Eddy

AFTER TAKING ON ghosts in The Sixth Sense and real-life superhumans in Unbreakable, writer-director M. Night Shyamalan – a man who no doubt watched his share of In Search Of ... episodes during his formative years – returns with his most suspenseful work yet. Signs centers on a Pennsylvania farmer and former man of the cloth, Graham Hess (Mel Gibson), who wakes one morning to find mysterious circular patterns pressed into his cornfield. Before long, Graham and his kids – 10-year-old Morgan (Rory Culkin) and 5-year-old Bo (Abigail Breslin) – and his brother, failed baseball pro Merrill (Joaquin Phoenix), are thrust into circumstances as terrifying as they are enigmatic.

That much you know from the preview, and to say much more about plot specifics would detract from Signs's most engaging aspect – a steadily escalating sense of urgency, of something horrible just about to happen, that's firmly in place even before the opening credits stop rolling. Suffice to say, the otherworldly crop circles get less screen time once the really spooky shit starts to kick in. Imagine a Hitchcockian Close Encounters of the Third Kind with added elements of Field of Dreams, Panic Room, and E.T. by way of Independence Day.

Admit it: If an alien race ever did take an interest in our planet, we'd all hope a crack team of cocky daredevils (Will Smith, Jeff Goldblum, Randy Quaid) would unite to save Earth's ass. But the picture painted by Signs is a quieter, more profound take on the matter. The filmmaker's trademark technique of using supernatural occurrences as catalysts for problem solving – because nothing clears the way for efficient, no-bullshit conflict resolution like having the yell scared out of you – is used to good effect here. The Hess family certainly has its share of issues, the most paralyzing of which is that Graham's wife was killed in a gruesome car accident six months earlier, causing him such grief he has completely lost his faith.

Anyone who's seen The Sixth Sense knows that Shyamalan likes to insert clues that point the way toward the film's final twist, and with Signs he's lost some of the subtle touch that made Sense one of those films people went to see twice, just to catch the fine points. You'd have to be sleeping not to notice some of the "hints" here (although, to be fair, whenever a character has asthma, in any movie, it's a red flag there'll be some wheezy moments come climax time). The most significant detail – er, sign – in Signs, though, is revealed in the first few seconds of the film, when the camera pans across a family portrait that shows Graham wearing his priest's collar. In the beginning, Graham's newfound disbelief in a God who would allow his wife to die is something he swears by; the stakes are so high, it'll take something like the possibly impending end of the world to make him reconsider.

And rarely has the possibly impending end of the world been rendered so intimately. Instead of showing CG'd shots of New York landmarks being blown to bits, or any sort of military subplot, or even a clear view of a spacecraft, Signs shows us fear turned inward, to an isolated farm in a rural community, where Graham and Merrill board up the windows of their home, Night of the Living Dead-style. Though the family reacts as anyone would, by rushing to the television, we're shown very little of what they learn from the media, aside from quick looks at news reports of crop circles found in India and lights seen in the sky over Mexico City. Mostly, the family members concentrate on each other, viewing the maybe-apocalypse with a mixture of deadpan humor, heightened emotions, and bursts of nearly insurmountable fright.

Signs's ad campaign sells it as a straight-up thriller, but it's really an emotional drama, albeit one infused with more dread than, say, Stepmom. Thought-provoking, if obviously trying to be so at times, Signs skillfully reuses the Sixth Sense ploy of slowly drawing the film's subtext to the forefront of the "scary" story. Some corny, distracting factors shadow the finale a bit, but Shyamalan is definitely in his element here.

'Signs' opens Fri/2 at Bay Area theaters. See Movie Clock, in Film listings, for show times.