Welshrogue

A family in the countryside wake up one morning to find crop circles in their fields. In the following days, crop circles appear around the world. Are they connected and do they have a sinister purpose? A fallen preacher and his family find themselves under seige in the farm house as the makers of the circles appear.

Mel Gibson stars as the preacher who no longer believes after his wife is killed. The focus of the movie stays on his family as they react to the events occurring around the world. Rather than looking at the big picture, Signs looks at the small picture of one family. It doesn’t have huge special effects to blow the viewer away, it uses television broadcasts very well to convey what is happening around the world.

In the best way, this is a sci fi B movie. It isn’t a block buster, it doesn’t have non stop action, instead it has a great story, utilizes unseen rather than on screen and injects humour from time to time to stop becoming too much of a horror movie.

Yes, it is a M. Night Shyamalan movie so there is the ending of the movie which is either obvious from the hints dropped throughout the movie or shocking and surprising. Signs is the first movie from Night that the viewer notices things said or done that are obviously being setup for later on.

There are several subtext to the movie, including the obvious one of one man’s relationship with God, but they don’t interfere with the main plot of crop circles and who made them.

Signs is opposite to the recent remake of War of the Worlds. While Tom Cruise and family ran, and went through challenges, Signs keeps the family at home and yet puts them through scares and challenges as good as any in War of the Worlds.

As previously mentioned, Signs is a classic science fiction B movie. If it had been made in the 50s, it would have fit in very well indeed, and that is not an insult by any means.