M Night Shyamalan's Signs isn't long released here in the UK and already there is claim and counter-claim over its merit. When I saw it, full of expectation after the twin tour-de-force of The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, I was faintly disappointed. The trailer promises a film with few special effects and a lot of carefully-engineered suspense, just like Shyamalan's other movies. The trailer, quite clearly, is mistaken.
Taking place on the farm you see to the left, the opening 10 minutes see an ex-minister and his children (and younger brother, sensitively played by Joaquin Phoenix) lifted off the usual mortal coil by the discovery of crop-circles in their corn. Before long, more circles start to appear - notably in Bangalore, India, and elsewhere in the USA. The discoveries herald the appearance of UFOs in the sky near the sites of the circles. The UFOs herald a disastrous re-hash of the 9/11 anxiety in journalistic reporting, but it can't be denied it's riveting stuff at the time. I felt like standing up and leaving - and very unsettled too.
But when all's said and done, I can't help feeling that the film was a rather monumental waste of perfectly good talent. Certainly the lead character Graham Hess (Mel Gibson) is very well-constructed and expertly played, but I couldn't help feeling that the others were optinal satellites in wobbly orbit around his sun. Even the director's trademark preternaturally gifted child, played well by Rory Culkin, was nothing more than an instrument for propelling Gibson towards the unsatisfying finale. Some people may be really touched; I wasn't.
Something which did impress me was the photo (right) I found on this site. What a feat! People who make crop circles definitely fucking rock! And maybe we need more stylised alien creatures handing us CDs after all. Long live the mp3; long live the aliens who give them to us.
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