Mysterious 'Signs' ends
with a thrill
By Geronimo Rodriguez
The Daily Cougar
It isn't rare when a filmmaker replicates
something he or she has successfully done in the past. One can go from
Alfred Hitchcock's work to Quentin Tarantino's and find themes used in
their respected films. But to entertain and to even add to those themes
is what makes a fine filmmaker.
In Signs, M. Night Shyamalan begins with
a decent story line and, in retrospect, propels it into a thrilling two
hours that you'll want to see again once the
credits roll.
Photo courtesy of Touchstone
Pictures
Graham Hess (Mel Gibson)
(right) and his brother Merrill (Joaquin Phoenix) find themselves preparing
for the inevitable in writer/director M. Night
Shyamalan's thriller Signs.
Without giving anything away, just keep
your eyes peeled and hope that one of your many guesses by the film's end
is something close to what unfolds.
With The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, some
have begun calling Shyamalan the next Steven Spielberg. Why? Well it's
easy to see the parallels between
their works. Both have made films aimed
toward all audiences, especially children. Both have explored the extra-terrestrial.
And they are both fine storytellers.
It's a fair comparison, but when considering
the acting found in Shyamalan's films, one might find him more willing
to explore the human aspects of stories
rather than the technical. With this in
mind, Shyamalan is likely to get a more intriguing performance from his
cast (who would have thought Bruce Willis
could have pulled off his role in The
Sixth Sense?).
This isn't to say that Gibson's fine performance
is surprising, but it's an effort that enhances the film's many climaxes.
Aside from acting, Shyamalan, like any
good director, relies on settings and camera movements to feed the story.
Some might leave Signs wanting more of
an explanation for the crop circles and others will find Shyamalan used
true events as a vehicle to tell the story of a
faith-broken man and his family. Either
way, Shyamalan makes it work on more than a few levels and gives audiences
a final sequence that rivals his last two efforts.
