Signs (film)
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- This article is about the Signs movie. For other references to Signs, see Signs. For other uses of the word sign, see Sign.
| Signs | |
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| Directed by | M. Night Shyamalan |
| Produced by | Frank Marshall Sam Mercer M. Night Shyamalan |
| Written by | M. Night Shyamalan |
| Starring | Mel Gibson Joaquin Phoenix |
| Distributed by | Buena Vista International |
| Release date(s) | August 2, 2002 |
| Running time | 106 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $72 million |
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| IMDb profile | |
Signs is a 2002 science fiction/thriller/drama film directed by M. Night Shyamalan, and starring Mel Gibson, Joaquin Phoenix, Rory Culkin, and Abigail Breslin. It was a booming critical success and became one of the highest grossing films of 2002; it earned US$228 million in the United States, and US$408 million worldwide.
Gibson plays an Episcopalian priest who "has been shut down by a devastating life experience." Although the plot revolves around crop circles, producer Frank Marshall said, "It's really about human emotions set in motion by a supernatural event." Shyamalan, who also plays a neighbor in the film, was inspired by Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Birds.
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[edit] Plot
The film is about a family that lives on a farm in Doylestown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Graham Hess is a former Episcopal priest who lost his faith after the death of his wife, Colleen, in a horrific traffic accident caused by Ray Reddy, a driver who fell asleep at the wheel. No longer practicing religiously, Graham lives with his brother, Merrill, and his two children, Bo and Morgan. In the accompanying photo of Mel Gibson, notice the name on the football shirt, "division". This is an important plot device to show that what the viewer is observing is the duality of Hess's mind, i.e. we see both the real world and his imagined world as his mind sets to "right" himself.
Things are fairly steady in his life until a mysterious crop circle appears in his cornfield. Its origin and purpose are unknown; some townspeople speculate that it may be a prank while a few others that it may have been created by intelligent alien life-forms. Throughout the film, we learn that Bo has a peculiar aversion to water that is not fresh from the faucet; she constantly says things like "The water is contaminated", and is always asking for a fresh glass of water, leaving behind half-consumed glasses of water around the house (or in whatever dwelling she happens to be).
As the story progresses, it is clear that Graham's farm is under watch; one night, he and Merrill chase a dimly-seen person who was spying on them from the roof of their barn. The mysterious being disappears into the crops, moving faster and disappearing far easier than anyone can explain. Soon Graham and his family are shocked to learn that similar crop circles have suddenly appeared all around the world in ways too similar and created too quickly to be merely a grand, elaborate hoax. Graham tries to distract his family from the facts by taking them into town where they see Ray Reddy, the man who inadvertently killed Graham's wife.
Merrill visits a U.S. Army Recruitment Center, operated by Sergeant First Class Cunningham. Cunningham tells Merril that there have been sightings by two families of trespassers in the area, and proposes to Merril a theory that they are reconnaissance missions by the aliens, meant to probe Earth's landing sites in preparation for a full-scale invasion. Cunningham also asks Merrill why he broke AAA Baseball records for distance hitting, but never went to the majors. Lionel Prichard (Michael Showalter), a man Merril knows as a prankster who causes trouble on the Hess farm, is also in the office. He ridicules Merrill and states that the reason for his records is Merrill's penchant for trying to hit a home run every time, resulting in the record for most strike-outs.
During the trip back home, Morgan is trying to make Bo's baby monitor work in hopes of catching the aliens' signal. Merrill tries to convince Morgan that everything is a hoax created by nerds, but it doesn't work at all. As they get out of the car, weird voices begin to speak from the baby monitor. Observing that baby monitor gets better reception at higher elevations, Morgan climbs up on the roof of the car with the monitor and figures out there are two of them talking. The baby monitor loses the signal soon after.
As the movie progresses, we see more televised news reports of crop circle sightings around the world, followed by sightings of UFOs, presumed to be of alien origin. The situation turns even more dangerous when the UFOs become invisible; however, the government and news agencies are certain that they still are there, due to the fact that a bird was observed flying into them and falling. One afternoon, after Graham leaves the house for a while, Merrill sees a video on the news of one of the aliens being at a birthday party in Passo Fundo, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. This is the first time that the viewer catches sight of one the aliens, seeing it walk across a small gap between a bush and a house.
The movie picks up pace when Graham visits Ray's home. The guilt-ridden veterinarian's enigmatic dialogue expresses regret for killing Graham's wife and his theories about what is happening. He drives away after warning Graham, "Don't open my pantry, Father. I found one of them in there; I locked 'im in." Upon investigating, Graham finds something intelligent and alive locked in Ray's kitchen closet, only dimly seen in the reflection of a knife blade. When a hand lunges for him under the door, he cuts off two of the intruder's fingers.
Graham returns home and finds his family waiting for him on the sofa, wearing hats made of aluminum foil to prevent the aliens from reading their minds. Merrill tells Graham that the aliens' skin can change colors, hence their nighttime invisibility. Learning from Morgan that they would probably invade if they were hostile and believing that the aliens are about to invade if they were so, Graham comes up with two alternatives: going to the lake, in hope that the aliens do not like water as Ray supposed (Ray pointed out that none of the crop circles have appeared close to bodies of water, so he went to the lake), or staying home. After a family vote, they decide to stay home, and they board up all the doors and windows. While Graham and Merrill do this, Morgan and Bo watch the news and find out that there are UFOs over 274 cities, and growing.
They board up the last doors and windows, and go to the family room, waiting for the aliens. Soon after, the aliens climb up to the roof and get in through the attic. When Merrill looks up the stairs to investigate the noises they are making, he discovers that they forgot to board up the attic access door. As time is short, the family decides to hide in the basement. They use an ax to block the door into the basement, but they have forgotten that there is another entrance: an old coal chute. Standing in front of the chute, Morgan is caught by an alien's hand. The flashlight is dropped and everything goes dark. Momentarily, Bo picks up the flashlight and shines it around the basement and discovers Graham lying on the floor with Morgan on the ground. Morgan is having a severe asthma attack; worse yet, no one has Morgan's medicine. As they sit together, Graham attempts to calm Morgan down by talking to him. Appearing close to a breakdown, he whispers, "I hate you" and "Don't do this to me again", apparently aimed at God, whom he blames for taking his wife from him.
The next morning, the family returns upstairs to discover their house ransacked. The local news reports that the aliens invaded the whole world, kidnapping people by gassing (and consequently killing) them (it is never explained what their purpose was, but M. Night Shyamalan has suggested that they were harvesting humans for food). At this point in the film, all of the aliens appear to have left the planet; humans have discovered a way to defeat them. The aliens have even left their wounded behind.
Before the family can celebrate, the alien whose claws Graham cut off earlier appears and takes his son into its arms. It sprays a poisonous gas into Morgan's face from a spine beneath what would be the wrist on a human, which we now understand to be the way that it attacks and kills people. Graham has a flashback of his wife dying, and recalls her last words, telling him to "see" and to tell Merrill to "swing away." In a revelatory moment, Graham sees what he feels is a purpose behind these events, and he tells Merrill to "swing away." Merrill takes his baseball bat down from the wall and attacks the alien with it as Graham grabs Morgan's medicine and takes the children outside. The alien falls backwards into a half-empty glass of water that Bo left out, and it burns through its flesh. Now knowing its weakness, Merrill keeps on attacking it, knocking over all Bo's water glasses until enough water hits and kills the alien.
Joining the others outside, Merrill finds that Morgan is not breathing and fears the worst, but Graham explains that the asthma has closed Morgan's lungs, saving him from the poison. Moments later, Morgan's lungs open and he appears to be on the way to recovery.
In the end, Graham regains his faith because he feels that the last words of his wife were a message from God. It appears that Bo's aversion to stale water, Morgan's asthma, and Merrill's hard but inaccurate swinging ability had all turned out to be blessings in disguise. The final scene in winter shows Graham wearing a reverend's collar, getting ready, presumably, for church with his family.
[edit] Cast
- Mel Gibson as Graham Hess
- Joaquin Phoenix as Merrill Hess
- Rory Culkin as Morgan Hess
- Abigail Breslin as Bo Hess
- Cherry Jones as Officer Caroline Paski
- M. Night Shyamalan as Ray Reddy
- Patricia Kalember as Colleen Hess
- Ted Sutton as Sergeant First Class Cunningham
The story is presented chronologically except for the scenes detailing the death of Graham's wife. There are several of these flashbacks, sometimes repeating the same footage, but progressively revealing more details. The film's dramatic structure resembles others of its genre (especially Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds) but with some surprises, notably its exploration of the deeper psychological and religious aspects of human-felt terror. One of the first images we see is a cross-shaped "clean spot" on the wall of Graham's bedroom. We infer that the cross was removed when the death of Graham's wife precipitated his crisis of faith, yet its image remains. People can't stop calling him "Father", though he asks them not to, and a girl in town insists he hear her confession. Most poignantly, throughout the building terror, Graham's family looks to him for pastoral reassurance, which he can't (or won't) provide.
The suspense builds slowly at first, though not without foreboding (early on, the family dog is skewered with a barbeque fork). Graham insists the family go about its business normally, but the children quickly size up the impending alien invasion, finally confirmed by worldwide television coverage. A pivotal dramatic moment is the late-night whispered exchange between Graham and Merrill, in which each stakes out his philosophical position on the impending tragedy. Here the double meaning of the movie's title is revealed: the crop circles are signs, but so are premonitions from God. Graham no longer believes in signs.
The twist at the end of Signs is a little different from M. Night Shyamalan's other films, like The Sixth Sense. In those films, some important fact is withheld from the audience until the end; in Signs, it is the meaning of the facts that is revealed. As the family battles the now-visible enemy, the disconnected details of the story (Morgan's asthma, Bo's aversion to stale water, Colleen's apparently nonsensical last words) all come to rapid-fire convergence, the goal being not only the family's survival, but Graham's redemption.
[edit] Deleted scenes
On the DVD, there are some deleted scenes:
- Flashbacks 1 and 2: Two scenes with Graham's wife, Colleen. In one, she dances with him, and in another, she is sitting with a toddler Morgan and baby Bo in a rocking chair while Graham watches.
- The dead bird: With no sound, this scene shows Graham going back home from Ray's, and after a short time, a dead bird near the road (after supposedly hitting an invisible Forcefield) is shown.
- The attic door and the third story: The longest one, it starts with Merrill finding out about the not-boarded attic door. Despite Graham's efforts to call him back, Merrill goes up the stairs and manages to hold the door by climbing up a chair and putting his hands at the door. Trying to help, Graham looks for a way to hold the door. He gets a tall shelving unit, and places it under the door. Knowing this is only a temporary solution, Graham gets his family and take them to a small room and put some chairs at the door to hold the aliens out of the room. There, he tells the "third story", about Merril, in which he broke his arm. Then everyone goes down to the basement, the only safe (but with no exit) room available.
[edit] Trivia
- The Brazilian birthday party scene resembles the purported real life events of the Varginha incident, and may be based on them. Film critics noted that the video of the alien is vaguely reminiscent of the infamous Patterson-Gimlin film from 1967.
- The part of the movie where the family hides in the basement is very similar to a scene from H.G. Wells' novel The War of the Worlds, in which the narrator hides in the cellar of an abandoned house. In both stories, the aliens understand doors and attempt to open them. In The War of the Worlds, the alien opens the cellar door but does not succeed in finding the protagonist. In Signs, the alien attempts to open the basement door, but Graham holds it shut. The basement scene is also a nod to Night of the Living Dead in which its protagonist (Duane Jones) escapes to the basement in a last ditch effort to avoid the zombies, who try desperately to break inside like the aliens do in Signs, as the movie also takes place within the countryside in a country house. This scene is parodied in Scary Movie 3.
- The scene in the cornfield resembles a similar scene in E.T. where the last shot is a swing swaying from being bumped by an alien.
- The first scenes shot on this movie were of the incident with Graham's wife the night she dies. This was filmed on September 12, 2001, the day after the terrorist attacks on New York; before they commenced filming, the film crew held an all-night vigil to honor the victims of the attack.
- The rescue squad used in the film is not from Newtown, Pennsylvania, but rather from Bristol, Pennsylvania a bit south. The reason for this is they are the only squad in Bucks County whose ambulances have markings needed for the film. All other squads in the area have the township they are from written on the side. The Bristol Squad (#143) have only "Bucks County Rescue Squad" written on the side, this allows for the accident to happen anywhere in the county and allow for the proper amount of time to pass before Mel Gibson's character arrives on scene. Another film by M. Night Shyamalan, Lady in the Water, is filmed in the same area the rescue squad services (Levittown, Pennsylvania).
- In the movie, there is the line "There are no coincidences, only chance and fate exist." This is from the book The Language of Fear by Del James, on the page just before the first story.
- The clicking communication of the aliens seems to be a nearly exact clone of the aliens in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, "Schisms".
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- M. Night Shyamalan - Signs
- Signs at the Internet Movie Database
- Signs at Rotten Tomatoes
- M. Night Shyamalan Fans - Signs
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| Praying with Anger • Wide Awake • The Sixth Sense • Unbreakable • Signs • The Village • Lady in the Water |
