Signs (2002)

I loved M. Night Shyamalan’s box-office-smash ghost story “Sixth Sense,” and dug the under-appreciated bleak superhero thinker “Unbreakable.” For me, sky was the limit for Shyamalan when his alien-invasion flick “Signs” hit cinemas. I was stoked. Then I saw it. Sky fell. Hard and fast, and has never risen again. This is a painful, awkward, insulting film to sit through, the absolute symbol of bad cinema to me. Not just when Shyamalan unleashes his trademark “gotchya!” shocker when a legion of world-invading aliens turn out to be allergic to water (!) on a planet full of water, but the whole damn dull story of a faithless priest (Mel Gibson) living with his young children and faithless baseball player brother (Joaquin Phoenix, young enough to be Gibson’s son). Hours drag by as the titular crop circles appear, the plot is set for the green visitors to arrive, and then the climax comes and a glass of H2O and a Louisville slugger are the weapons of choice. Ridiculous. This is the moment where a star filmmaker turned incredulous hack, when Shyamalan screamed aloud, “They’ll love it,” and no one said, “No.” He’s never recovered. F