SOME THINGS ARE MEANT TO HAPPEN

Do you ever have expectations that a film is going to be about one thing, when in actual fact it turns out to be about something else? Signs was certainly like this for me. Even the cinema trailers had suggested that it was going to be something that it wasn’t, but I still wasn’t disappointed. Such is the storytelling capability of M Night Shyamalan that I still found myself completely engrossed from start to finish.

Graham initially calls the local police officer, who comes out to investigate the bizarre phenomenon. She is equally bemused, but when she advises him that there have been a number of strange occurrences across the town, Graham starts to feel uneasy. His son, Morgan, believes that the crop signs are huge markers left by an alien force that are used to mark out the surface of the planet for a forthcoming invasion. Whilst Graham dismisses the theory as being the product of an over active imagination, he cannot shake off the feeling of unease and when he hears something moving outside, he goes into the corn field to investigate. What he finds terrifies him, and confirms that Morgan may be closer to the truth than any of them could realise. And then strange lights appear in the sky over Mexico City…..

What I found so intriguing about this film was the fact that from start top finish I really didn’t know what to expect. At times, I thought it was going to descend into a Spielberg-esque tale of alien close encounters. At others, I thought we were going to be confronted by an alien-based Jurassic Park story. On both counts I was completely wrong, but such is the skill of Shymalan’s story writing ability that I still can’t quite come up with words to describe this film. The story doesn’t so much twist as blossom and flourish, with a few frights along the way. This is a film on which you to have to concentrate, and about which you have to think – which is probably one of the reasons why main stream cinema audiences were a little disappointed.

Signs stars Mel Gibson in an unconventionally timid role. Gibson is excellent as the confused priest, struggling to look after his family and deal with his grief at the same time. Although he probably is the hero of the tale, he is also perpetually frightened throughout the film and is very convincing indeed. His younger brother, Merrill, gradually becomes drawn into the nation wide fear of the aliens and Joaquin Phoenix perfectly combines wide-eyed superstition with a natural instinct to protect those around him. Shyamalan himself has a small part in the film – that of Ray Reddy, the unfortunate local man who was responsible for the death of Graham’s wife. I have to say that I also thought that Cherry Jones was excellent as Officer Paski. Her conversation with Graham as he arrived at the scene of his wife’s death was very moving and provided one of the most poignant scenes in the film.