Imagine, if you will, living on a remote farmstead in Pennsylvania, miles from the nearest town. You are woken early one morning, the peace of a normally quiet dawn being shattered by your usually placid dog barking loudly outside the house. You rise to see what that matter is, stopping en route at your children's bedroom to check whether they too have been woken. But they are not there. You call their names out, and no reply comes back to you. Panic starts to rise inside you. You hurry outside to look for your dog and find out why he is barking, running through crop fields until you find the animal, scared and bewildered, barking at an unseen enemy in the field beyond. Your two children are with the dog, all three of them staring in bemusement at the huge circles that have been flattened in the crops overnight - silently and without breaking a single stem - to leave an intricate pattern of no known purpose...

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And so begins "Signs", the latest film by director M Night Shyamalan - the mastermind behind "Sixth Sense" and "Unbreakable". It has been a long time coming, but Hollywood has finally woken up to two facts: firstly that the subject of crop circles has movie potential, and secondly that there is a good chunk of film viewers out there who would like to see something that would make them THINK. So impressed were the movie bosses at Disney upon reading this script, that they closed a $10 million dollar deal with Shyamalan the Sunday after first being presented with it. This broke the previous record payment for a script, which was held by Shane Black for "The Long Kiss Goodnight" (at a paltry $4 million).

"Signs" revolves around the central character of Graham Hess (played by Mel Gibson), the patriarch of a family living on the above farm. Hess was formerly the local town's reverend, but had retired from this post after suffering a crisis of faith following the death of his wife in a road accident some months previously. Living with Hess are his two young children, Morgan (Rory Culkin, brother of you-know-who) and Bo (the exceedingly cute Abby Breslin). Since the death of Mrs Hess, Graham's younger brother Merrill (Joaquin Phoenix) has moved in to help with the running of the farm and the care of his niece and nephew - he was formerly a minor league baseball star.

The film then is very introspective, based around this small cast of characters and their reactions and responses to a series of events happening both around them and around the world. It is not just at the Hess's farm that the mysterious crop circles have appeared; hundreds of them have been cropping up (sorry!) in many countries in a matter of just a couple of days. So what exactly is happening here? Is this a hoax on a grand scale as Graham Hess wants desperately to believe at first? Is there going to be an imminent alien invasion? Is this in fact the end of the world? Well, the beauty of this, as with other Shyamalan films, is that it manages to keep to guessing as to the cause of the circles right up to the end, leaving you glued to the film as you are treated to a carefully constructed tale of suspense and tension that I dare say Hitchcock himself would be proud of.

Some people (including the annoying teenagers in the cinema where I saw "Signs" it would appear) have simply dismissed this as an extended episode of the X Files, or a poor attempt at a horror film. But to call "Signs" these things is to miss the point of it entirely. This is a film that is not intended as a supernatural whodunit in the Mulder & Scully sense, and nor is it a horror film (although I think it is sufficiently scary in places for its 12 certificate to be decidedly misplaced). This is a film that falls somewhere between a drama and a thriller; it is designed to make you feel the fear of the unknown that would be experienced by a typical family in such a situation, to be claustrophobic and insular as you only see events through their eyes. It is also intended to make to think - we all know by now that the director likes to put twists in the tale and challenge our expectations, so no doubt there will be many people watching this film with the explicit personal task of spotting the clues and unravelling the plot before the conclusion. (I was one of these people BTW - and I came away feeling pretty satisfied that I half got the idea before the end of the film!)

This was easily the best film I had seen in a long time, and I recommended it to anyone with the ability to think for themselves who wants to enjoy a damn good movie. The acting was good (but not brilliant) and the kids were convincing - directing was superb and cinematography excellent. Hollywood replacing special effects with an intellectual script? Whatever next?

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CAUTION! SPOILERS AHEAD!

Right, now having done my duty with regard to plotlines and reviewing, I hope you don't mind if I take the liberty of sharing my interpretations of "Signs" with you? If you have reached this point without seeing the film (or are too bored to continue), I do hope you will be good enough to skip to the end and rate this opinion on the basis of what you have read thus far. :-)

So what do I think happened in this film then? Well, the obvious explanation is a creepy alien invasion, but there is one other way of looking at these events that I have found (there may of course be others that I have yet to suss out though, knowing what Shyamalan is like). Firstly, I think it is pretty obviously that the one "invader" seen is in fact the late Mrs Hess; the fact that she told her husband how to protect her son when the time came, and that she went after the man responsible for her death before coming for her son proves this. (We know that the creature in the Hess's house was the same as the one trapped in the kitchen of the man who ran over Mrs Hess because of the missing finger it sported in both places). Secondly, there are two clear themes running through the film that you need to be aware of in any interpretation - that of aliens and that of spirituality.

Taking these two themes, the first explanation (that of an alien invasion) is explained thus:
- Mrs Hess was an alien and knew of the invasion; this is how she managed to inform her husband of how to protect their son for when she would come back.

- The lights in the sky shown on the news broadcasts were alien spacecraft, and the crop circles were signs to tell the craft where to invade.

- The creatures avoided water and conformed to other information given in Morgan's book on aliens and UFOs.

- Bo Hess was describes as being an unusual baby with "big, round eyes" by her father and also hates water; if she was in fact half-alien, then she is following their pattern of behaviour and displaying a physical characteristic that is generally associated with most alien sightings.

And I think most people watching the film would get this, and go away happy that they had just witnessed a film about an alien invasion. But, taking the second theme running through the film (spirituality), then you could give the alternative explanation of this being Judgement Day, and the invading creatures being angels who are taking the deserving people of Earth back up to Heaven with them. The evidence for this interpretation is:
- Of all the people on the Hess's farm during the invasion, it is Morgan who is chosen to be taken. If you follow the dialogue, it can be seen that Morgan is the only member of the family who still has faith, and therefore it would only be him going to Heaven.

- In the opening scene, Morgan says that the crop circle "must have been made by God".

- The lights in the sky were lights from Heaven and not UFOs (and was it me, or did they congregate over especially religious parts of the world such as Mexico City, rural America and Jerusalem, or am I reading too much into this?)

- Mrs Hess was in a strange psychological state before she died, owing to the injuries she sustained. Perhaps as her soul was ascending to Heaven she somehow was briefly aware of the forthcoming Judgement Day and was therefore able to give her husband information to avoid him losing his son so soon after losing his wife.

- There is no direct evidence from the film of the creatures causing destruction or death.
- The crop circles were to show where the angels were to come for those people to be taken up to Heaven.
- And Bo must just have been a freaky child!

So what do you think? Is there another explanation or points I have not connected?

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Below I give some website addresses if you want to read more about this film:
www.leesmovieinfo.net/MovieReviews/SignsLee.html
www.signsmovie.co.uk/movie1.html
www.signsmovie.co.uk

P.S.
This is my first ever film review, despite it being my 60th opinion! I therefore would be very grateful for any comments or constructive criticism on this opinion.

Thanks for spending your time reading and rating, I know it was a bit of a long one.
:-)