08/05/2002 Entry:
"Signs - M. Night Shyamalan (2002)"

Up there with Minority Report as disappointment of the year, for many of the same reasons. This post contains even more massive spoilers than usual.

The biggest thing that galled me throughout the viewing of this film was the oh-so-obvious clues that were dropped throughout the narrative. I had this problem with Minority Report too. A perfect example - the walkie talkie sequence with Rory Culkin and the cop. Now, as written, Rory is playing with the walkie talkie and the cop says that if you have an old baby monitor around you can use that as a walkie talkie too. Whats wrong with that? As soon as I heard those words I KNEW that a baby monitor would be used as a walkie talkie at some critical point later in the film. What would have been better? Why not just have Rory talk to the cop about walkie talkies, then later figure out the baby monitor thing on his own? This would establish him as clever, and would allow a real surprise for the audience. THEN you can say to yourself, "how come a kid this clever believes in aliens?" and THEN you can feel bad for not believing in him. See how easy it is? I should become a rewrite man. Maybe the studio executives think an audience is too stupid to figure this kind of thing out for themselves and nobody wants to feel stupid compared to a five year old kid? Who knows, the point is this kind of moronic screenwriting is what kills so many Hollywood pictures for me.

Another example - M. Night says, "I heard a rumor they don't like the water." Instantly I knew that the glasses of water the girl was leaving around the house were going to be used to kill an alien at some point. This obvious knowledge actually LESSENED the suspense later in the film because as they were trapped in the basement I knew they weren't going to fight an alien because the obvious setup from earlier had to play out. Thus as they emerged to a supposedly alien-free home, I figured "oh well, this has to be it." DO these screenwriters really not realize how this kind of thing destroys a film? Do studio execs force these kinds of changes on them? I really want to know.

More screenplay annoyance - the wrapup of the clues at the end as Mel Gibson flashes back to everything that happened in the movie to make sure the audience gets it. Guess what? WE JUST WATCHED THE FUCKING MOVIE! My attention span is not so short that I can't remember something that happened an hour ago! This was the one big thing I HATED in Donnie Darko too, made even worse by Richard Kelly explicitly stating in the commentary that they just wanted to make sure the audience got it. Yeah, thanks Dick.

Some of this is heightened by that fact that because M. Night did this movie, we expect a puzzle picture. So instead of paying attention to the film, we pay attention to the clues. It just seems like both Unbreakable and Sixth Sense were so much more subtle than this. They were both really about something other than the puzzle as well. Sixth Sense was just a story about a lost soul trying to find his way by helping a child find his, and then it turned out he was a ghost too, but that was cool because it helped everything that happened before resonate all the more sharply. Unbreakable was also about a journey as a man discovers his powers and in the process discovers himself. If this film had ended after the rescue with him and his son at the table I personally think it would have been a better film, but with the gag ending it was fine too. Signs though is just a puzzle film with a weak story wrapped around it, and after two wonderful films my estimation of M. Night has dropped a hundredfold.

As if all this wasn't enough, Night caps the film with one of the stupidest, boneheaded, on the nose, feel good closing shots in movie history. HOW STUPID DO YOU THINK WE ARE WE COULDN'T FIGURE THIS OUT OURSELVES? Christ this entire movie just made me so mad. I recently read a posting where someone stated that Soderbergh has contempt for his audience. You want to see contempt for the audience? Assume the audience so fucking stupid they couldn't figure out that Mel Gibson returns to the priesthood after his son is saved, and use a closing shot like the one in Signs. THAT is contempt for your audience. I have to believe the studio pushed Night into this, if it was really his idea then screw him and the rest of his movies. I will freely admit that if this had been a Jerry Bruckenheimer movie I probably would have though it was fine, but coming from someone who I had come to respect and whose movies I actually looked forward to, I feel betrayed. Yes, its stupid. Yes, I'm getting too wrapped up in this. I've tried to write this in a more steady tone, but it just isn't happening.

Of course, this film grossed twice the opening weekend of either of his other films. It makes sense, its been marketed three ties as heavily (right down to the actual crop circles planted by Disney in the past few weeks to gain interest in the phenomenon. Don't even try to tell me this is coincidence.) Then again, of course it was marketed three times as heavily. It has been dumbed down to the point that a three year old can watch it without getting confused, which brings us back to the old question of is Hollywood providing stupid movies because audiences want them or are has the audience been dumbed down by Hollywood's stupid movies OR is the audience getting sick of Hollywood's bullshit and is planning to revolt? I'd like to believe #3 but I don't have it in me (although the recent successes of films like Memento, Amelie and Y Tu Mama Tambien gives some hope.)

Signs has also been critically acclaimed by all the major critics, as opposed to Steven Soderbergh's vastly misunderstood Full Frontal which is a superior film that has been ignored by the marketplace. Of course without any marketing its hard to succeed in the marketplace. No matter though, Hollywood will deem it a failure and heck, it was probably so cheap to make it will still make money (I think it grossed about a million this weekend.)

Sorry, got into a little bit of a Rosenbaum rant there. I will attempt to calm down a bit and state some of the good things in Signs. M. Night spends a lot of the film keeping everything in the shadows, which is a nice change of pace and in a film with an actual screenplay would have successfully built tension well (although I would have liked it if less of the scares were of the "jump out and yell BOO" sort.) There is one scene which is genuinely creepy and eerie, the amateur footage of the alien in Mexico. That was pretty fucking cool, and the only time I really got the shivers in the entire proceeding. All the actors did their jobs well, particularly the little girl and Jouaqim Phoenix who redeems himself after the miserable Gladiator. I didn't buy Mel Gibson as the fallen angel, I think Night would have been better serviced getting an actor with less baggage. Hey, maybe the studio forced him to get a big star too. Sorry. Sorry. The cinematography was very nice throughout, I particularly liked the one shot where Mel and Jouaqim were wandering around the basement with their flashlights, moving closer and closer to the corner where you knew something would be lurking. Just the pitch black with those spots moving around, inching towards the center of the screen. That was also cool.

The more I sit here and think about the more likely it seems that studio interference and preview audience bullshit is the only reason this movie is so bad. I just find it so hard to fathom why such a thoughtful screenwriter would do something so obvious and hackneyed. Just like Minority Report, Signs could have just as easily been so much more and it would have done just as well in the marketplace. Instead we have another shitty summer movie which made me bitter.

Replies: 2 comments

I found your site through Scott Tobia's homepage--just wanted to say "thank you" for expressing my exact thoughts re: SIGNS. "Disappointed" doesn't even cover it. You have a really great site. Keep up the good work. kza Posted by Kent M. Beeson @ 08/26/2002 06:27 PM CST

Thanks for the comment and compliment. Its nice to see someone who agrees with me about Signs, seeing as how the film has been praised from almost all corners. It is no surprise to me that it is the most popular of Night's films, for all the wrong reasons. Since writing the piece above, I was referred to some interviews wherein Night claims that if an audience doesn't like his film, then he feels the film is a failure. This just strikes me as sad, because obviously he's to blame for the film's failings. It was so much easier believing he caved to studio execs. Greg Posted by gdd @ 08/27/2002 10:29 AM CST