| Signs (film) | |
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Theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | M. Night Shyamalan |
| Produced by | M. Night Shyamalan Frank Marshall Kathleen Kennedy Sam Mercer |
| Written by | M. Night Shyamalan |
| Starring | Mel Gibson Joaquin Phoenix Rory Culkin Abigail Breslin |
| Music by | James Newton Howard |
| Cinematography | Tak Fujimoto |
| Editing by | Barbara Tulliver |
| Studio | Touchstone Pictures Blinding Edge Pictures The Kennedy/Marshall Company |
| Distributed by | Buena Vista Pictures |
| Release date(s) | August 2, 2002 |
| Running time | 107 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $72 million[1] |
| Box office | $408,247,917[1] |
Signs is a 2002 American science fiction thriller film directed by M. Night Shyamalan. It was adapted from a screenplay also written by Shyamalan. Executive producers for the film comprised Shyamalan, Frank Marshall, Kathleen Kennedy and Sam Mercer. The story focuses on a former preacher named Graham Hess, who discovers a series of crop circles in his cornfield. Hess slowly becomes convinced that the phenomena are a result of extraterrestrial life. Mel Gibson, Joaquin Phoenix, Rory Culkin and Abigail Breslin star in principal roles. Signs explores faith, kinship and extraterrestrial life.[2]
A joint collective effort to commit to the film's production was made by Touchstone Pictures, Blinding Edge Pictures, and the Kennedy/Marshall Company. It was commercially distributed by Touchstone Pictures theatrically, and by Buena Vista Home Entertainment in home media format. Following its theatrical run, the film was nominated for multiple awards, including those from the Online Film Critics Society and the Empire Awards. The film also won an award from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. On August 2, 2002, the original motion picture soundtrack was released by the Hollywood Records label. The film score was composed by musician James Newton Howard.
Following its premiere in theatres nationwide in the United States on August 2, 2002, the film grossed $227,966,634 in domestic ticket receipts screening at 3,453 theatres during its widest release. It earned an additional $180,281,283 in business through international release to top out at a combined $408,247,917 in gross revenue. Considering its $72 million budget costs, the film was considered a strong financial success after its theatrical run, and was generally met with positive critical reviews before its initial screening in cinemas. The high-definition Blu-ray Disc editions of the film featuring the director's audio commentary, the making of the film, and deleted scenes was released in the United States on June 3, 2008.
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Graham Hess (Mel Gibson) is a former preacher. His wife Colleen (Patricia Kalember), was killed in a traffic accident caused by Ray Reddy (M. Night Shyamalan). The accident left Graham embittered and caused him to lose his faith in God, which in turn caused him to leave his church. Graham's younger brother Merrill (Joaquin Phoenix), a former minor league baseball player, helps run the family farm and care for Graham's kids, Morgan (Rory Culkin) and Bo (Abigail Breslin). Bo has a habit of leaving dozens of half-filled glasses of water around the house, stating that "[they] taste funny," etc.
Things are uneventful until a mysterious crop circle is found in the family cornfield. Graham thinks it's a hoax, while Morgan and Bo think it was made by aliens. One night, Bo wakes Graham up and tells him there's a monster outside her room. Sleepily, Graham tucks her back into bed, but when he looks out Bo's window he sees a black silhouette standing on the roof of the barn. Alarmed, he fetches Merrill and the two try to scare away the figure, believing it's Lionel Pritchard (Michael Showalter), a local prankster. The brothers run screaming around the house to frighten off the intruder; it then jumps from the roof directly into the farm's cornfield (stated by Marrill to be height of over 10 feet, not counting distance to the field). Both see the shadow of the running figure, but never get a good view of it.
The next day, Sheriff Caroline Paski (Cherry Jones) stops by to investigate the incident. She admits that unless Graham has a clear description of the perpetrator, she can't help him in finding the culprit. That evening, Graham goes outside to feed the dog, who is barking incessantly towards the cornfield. Taking a flashlight, Graham walks into the cornfield and calls out to the intruders that "they are wasting [their] time." While walking back, Graham hears a noise close by and spots a thin green leg sticking out among the cornrows; he runs back to the house, terrified. The family later watches television coverage of crop circles appearing all around the world.
During a talk with Merrill, Graham dismisses his brother's belief in signs and miracles, all evidence of some higher power, and says that they will have to face whatever is threatening them alone. The following morning, Graham receives a phone call from Ray Reddy, the man who accidentally killed his wife, saying only "Father?" before hanging up, as he is used to doing before Graham stopped being a preacher, and goes over to his office to meet with him. Meanwhile, Merrill watches the television which shows amateur footage depicting an alien walking by a child's birthday party in Brazil. Graham finds Ray outside his office, sitting in his car with blood stains on his shirt. He tells Graham he's heading for the lake, as he rationalizes that none of the alien activity has gone on near water. Before driving off, Ray pauses and apologizes for the accident that killed Graham's wife, and says he panicked, and was unsure what to do or who else to call, and tells him that he has trapped one of the aliens in his home. Investigating, Graham uses a kitchen knife to see reflection of the alien under a pantry door. A clawed hand reaches out, and Graham cuts off two of its fingers in self defense.
Back at his home, Graham gives his family the option to either stay at the house or follow Ray's advice and head towards the nearest body of water. They vote to stay home, not wanting to leave the place where they lived with their mother. Merrill and Graham board up the windows and doors in preparation for the attack they know is coming. When the time comes, they stand listening as the aliens move about their home, trying to get in. It is during this time that Merrill notices their fatal mistake - they have forgotten to board up the attic. They act quickly, moving the family into the basement to hide, and barricade themselves in. The aliens enter and are heard moving around upstairs and even trying to get into the basement. One of the aliens comes in through a coal shaft and grabs Morgan, causing him to have an asthma attack. Although the creature is repelled, Graham realizes that he has left Morgan's inhaler upstairs, and watches helplessly as the boy slowly passes out. The next morning, they hear on the radio that the aliens are retreating. Graham and his family head back upstairs but are ambushed by an alien, who takes the comatose Morgan hostage. Graham notices two of its fingers are missing, making it the alien from Reddy's pantry.
Graham flashes to the memory of the night that his wife died. She was pinned between the car and a tree, and the Sheriff informed Graham that as soon as they move the car, she will die since she was alive unnaturally already. He talks with his wife, and she tells him to tell Morgan to have fun and to be silly, for Bo to always listen to her brother because he will take care of her. She tells Graham to "see" and tells Merrill to "swing away."
Graham realizes that there are no coincidences, that everything happens for a reason, and he finds new meaning in his wife's final words. Looking around the living room, he notices Merrill's home run bat mounted on the wall, just a few feet from where Merrill is standing. He turns back to the alien, and tells Merrill to "swing away." Merrill realizes what he is implying, and grabs the baseball bat off of the wall. Seeing this, the alien sprays toxic gas into Morgan's face. Merrill swings his bat at the alien, knocking it down, causing it to drop Morgan, and causing one of Bo's water glasses to spill onto it. The water acts like acid on the alien's skin; Merrill starts smashing all of the glasses, before finally knocking the alien into a table, where water glasses spilled directly onto its face, killing it.
Morgan soon recovers, having been protected from the alien's gas when his throat closed during another asthma attack. A grateful Graham comes to believe that many of the seemingly random and tragic events of the past few years were designed to save Morgan and his family in this moment. His faith restored, Graham later gets dressed in his clerical garb and goes back to church.
All music composed by James Newton Howard.[3]
| Signs: Original Score | |
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| Soundtrack album by James Newton Howard | |
| Released | July 30, 2002 |
| Label | Hollywood Records |
| Signs: Original Score | |||||||||
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| No. | Title | Length | |||||||
| 1. | "Main Titles" | 1:45 | |||||||
| 2. | "First Crop Circles" | 3:15 | |||||||
| 3. | "Roof Intruder" | 2:20 | |||||||
| 4. | "Brazilian Video" | 1:56 | |||||||
| 5. | "In the Cornfield" | 5:40 | |||||||
| 6. | "Baby Monitor" | 1:07 | |||||||
| 7. | "Recruiting Office" | 2:07 | |||||||
| 8. | "Throwing a Stone" | 5:47 | |||||||
| 9. | "Boarding Up the House" | 3:00 | |||||||
| 10. | "Into the Basement" | 5:23 | |||||||
| 11. | "Asthma Attack" | 3:42 | |||||||
| 12. | "The Hand of Fate (Part 1)" | 5:32 | |||||||
| 13. | "The Hand of Fate (Part 2)" | 3:47 | |||||||
Signs garnered generally positive reviews from movie critics. Rotten Tomatoes reported that 74% gave positive appraisals, based on 221 reviews.[4] At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film scored a 59, based on 36 reviews.[5]
Roger Ebert wrote: "M. Night Shyamalan's 'Signs' is the work of a born filmmaker, able to summon apprehension out of thin air. When it is over, we think not how little has been decided, but how much has been experienced ... At the end of the film, I had to smile, recognizing how Shyamalan has essentially ditched a payoff. He knows, as we all sense, that payoffs have grown boring."[6] Like all of Shyamalan's work, Signs is not without its detractors, with Variety's Todd McCarthy writing: "After the overwrought Unbreakable and now the meager Signs, it's fair to speculate whether Shyamalan's persistence in replicating the otherworldly formula of The Sixth Sense might not be a futile and self-defeating exercise."[7]
In 2004, the film was listed as #77 on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments for the Brazilian birthday party scene.
Signs grossed $227,966,634 domestically, $180,281,283 internationally, and $408,247,917 worldwide[8] at the box office, ranking only behind The Sixth Sense in Shyamalan's box office success and grossing more than The Village and Unbreakable.
On the DVD, there are some deleted scenes:
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