This movie kind of reminded me of Plan 9 From Outer Space, which also had a not-so-subtle message (about the danger of nuclear war and the need for world peace). Are people who criticize Plan 9 for having a ridiculous plot, bad dialogue and cheesy special effects just being clueless about the true meaning of it? Is the stupidity of Plan 9 not an issue because it was about world peace and not aliens? Or does a filmmaker who’s trying to get some point across also need to make a movie that at least makes sense and doesn’t contain gigantic plot holes that undermine its heavy-handed message?
Also, if I see one more Sci Fi/horror movie with a plucky little precocious 7-year-old who knows more than all the adults around him, I’m going to snap!
I liked the movie alot, but I also thought it worked great as a comedy, as well as a thriller and character study. I did a lot of sly laughing, just like I’d do at a David Lynch picture. The kind of jokes where you’re not quite sure if they are supposed to be funny or not, but you can’t help seeing the humor.
F’rinstance: Am I the only one who, when the camera rested on the plaque holding the baseball bat, read the “507 feet” line, and instantly got this mental picture of the alien’s noggin sailing over the cornfield, slowly rotating end over end?
And the scene with the recruiting seargent? And the chick at the drug store? I second the emotion hoping Night does a full comedy one of these days…TRM
I also found it very difficult to see beyond the stupidity of the invading aliens. RealityChuck suggests that the story could work as well with terrorists instead of aliens, but I don’t see how this could be done without changing the story beyond all recognition. Terrorists could not be defeated with a baseball bat and glasses of water (at least, not in so straightforward a way). It was only because Shyamalan made the antagonists be aliens that he could get away with having the family dispatch them with such trivial means. It is as though he thought that by making them aliens, something most audience members have less experience with than more conventional foes, he had relieved himself of the obligation to find a plausible way that his heros could triumph.
Another more nitpickish thing that bothered me was that picture in the alien book showing their house on fire. What was the intention of showing that? I had assumed that it was supposed to be some kind of omen, something that they would have to take extraordinary steps to avoid. But things never led anywhere close to something like that happening. What was up with that?
I think it was red herring. Still, the David Lynch-like unreality of the scene was disturbing. (BTW, that scene, along with others like the one at the recruiting office, has led to some posters at other message boards to suggest that movie really is a dream.)
Just saw the flick last night, and I agree completely with CalMeacham.
Am I wrong, or didn’t Kang and Kodos launch an invasion that was defeated by farmers wielding 2x4s studded with nails on the Simpsons? I find Kang and Kodos FAR more believable, and much smarter, than these aliens.
Here’s a couple of completely idiotic things no one’s yet mentioned:
What the hell were they thinking when the boarded up the house, apparently choosing windows entirely at random? Surely they could have boarded up ONE room, and put some supplies in it. Oh, and by the way, it seemed to take several minutes for every freakin nail, because they couldn’t SHUT UP AND HAMMER.
as the family leaves the cellar, they open the door to see elaborate symbols by aliens CARVED RIGHT THROUGH WOOD outside! You’d think they could carve a friggin hole next to the cellar doornob!
I must admit, I liked the first half-hour, before all the idiocy began to cystallize. By the end, I was thinking how I’d rather see Independence Day, another really bad movie, but more believable. And considering how I despise Independence Day, I have to rate Signs two thumbs, eight fingers, and ten toes DOWN.
Aha! I just saw the movie last night and searched for this thread wondering about this. I couldn’t believe no one else noticed this. The aliens obviously had no trouble breaching the doors…so ummm, what the heck? What’s the deal with that scene? And also, how did the last alien find it’s way out of Ray’s pantry and into Gibson’s house? I mean, they weren’t exactly next door neighbors, were they?
Ok, this thread is long dead and I expected that someone would have come up with a similar explanation to explain the supposed “plot holes” in the story, but here it is:
The aliens are stupid because they are basically bio-engineered animals at a level of intelligence between monkeys and humans; the actual “aliens” (also non-carbon based lifeform) are on the motherships and they are basically sending those bio-weapons to pick up humans, not to destroy or defeat us.
Why? Well, obviously not as a food source, since they might as well have picked up other easier species here and we are basically pack of battery acid for them. But they also want to pick us whole (they are suspending humans by poisoning them) instead of obliterating us.
Why humans specifically instead of other animals? What makes us different? Our brains! At their level of technology, maybe they are able to use our brains cells in elaborate “bio-computers” or perhaps to make a very powerful drug. Or maybe they are just picking up samples before bio-engineering a virus that would kill us all (really, the simplest way to invade earth, don’t you think?).
Why aren’t they giving weapons or other technologies to their bioweapons? Well, what do you think would happen if the dirty apes would put their hands on advanced technologies? Plus, they are just not intelligent enough; they are probably like dogs that are told to fetch the newspaper…
Obviously, no way of knowing really (only the writer knows), but the point is they are ALIENS, they are not even carbon-based so don’t expect them to be the same…
Anyway, as I watched the movie I thought it was also very stupid but now that I think about it (and that whats great about that director movies; they keep you thinking) it makes sense.
Actually, I kept thinking of Night of the Living Dead. The only ones that made it(or would have made it) were the ones that took refuge in the basement.
“If you had a basement all this time, why not just take some supplies and board up that single door really well instead of trying to do so to every window? All they need is one weak spot and they’re in”
I saw that and the first thing I said was “My God! They’ve Cookie Cuttered Our House!”
At least ID4 was fun to watch, and the Aliens were smart enough to bring fricken doomsday devices.
What’s the theory that says that if you have to make up a complicated mythology to explain the plot holes, the filmmaker hasn’t done the job? rngadam’s explanation reminded me of that…
I watched Signs on DVD again last night, and I was reaffirmed in my general liking for it. It had some problems, but was an overall strong film. It was (pretty obviously, I thought) a play on a typical alien invasion film, but told from the perspective of a single family. It uses the pastiche of an established genre, and adds the dimension of real characterization and depth.
M. Night mentions in the commentary that he treated the genre parts of the film as a sort of homage to The Birds and Night of the Living Dead (both of which have been mentioned in this thread), and to my mind he was successful to that end. Particularly in the latter. In Romero’s Night of the Living Dead we have a film which shows it seams even more than Signs, which has many obvious special effects problems and bad moments. And yet, it’s extremely creepy and effective, justifiably a classic of the horror genre. While I don’t feel Signs was as strongly successful as Night of the Living Dead, I feel it did get across much of the same feeling, with the added dimension of some solid character development.
The thing to remember about M. Night’s movies is that they’re more about characters than plot. The Sixth Sense is about a doctor’s attempt to reconcile his life, and a little boy’s attempt to deal with his gifts. Their actual features (the doctor’s a ghost, the little boy can see and talk to ghosts) are somewhat secondary to the story of the character’s development, though they are important. Unbreakable is about a man who can’t find his purpose in life. He’s not particularly happy with anything, and he’s on the edge of losing his family. His comic-bookish superpowers are the vehicle by which he finds his purpose. Signs is about a family in tragic circumstances, in which the father has lost his faith (in his God, but also in himself, I think). The aliens are only important in the sense that they are the thing that helps him find his faith again. Other than that, they’re just window dressing, and they get treatment as such.
Signs has its problems, but I think that seen as an homage to other, similar genre films and a character study, it is pretty successful in its intent.
He did. It’s called Signs. I spent most of the movie trying to figure out whether to laugh or cry. It was just so totally horrible. I loved Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, and felt totally let down by this awful piece of film.
Most of the lapses of logic and plot holes have already been addressed, but am I the only one who thinks it’s slightly strange to see a fat Indian guy called Ray Reddy riding around in a pickup truck in hillbilly country? What’s wrong with this picture?
Not to mention how laughable it was to have the divine emotional message be “swing away”. Yeah, hitting the alien over the head with a baseball bat. Amazing. I’d never figured that out.
And let me get this straight: In a small Middle Eastern village they figure out how to defeat the aliens. Through some extraordinary means this spreads throughout the planet, but someone forgets to tell the news reporter? Every Chinese farmer got the message, but the guy with ten cell phones and a fax machine hasn’t got it yet.
I actually believe this was Shyamalan poking fun at Hollywood, seeing exactly how much ridiculous material he could throw in a movie before someone got the joke. The answer is: pretty much.
Oh, and if this is a “subtle character study,” I’m a fucking Emperor Penguin. How far into the movie was it before you knew that Mel was a priest who had lost his faith, and who had to somehow regain it before the end of the movie? 10 minutes? 15, tops?
I personally wish he had finally dropped his faith like the useless sack of bricks it proved to be. I wanted to see him take up that pick-axe and show the aliens what human beings have gotten very, very good at…killing things. There’s a philosophical statement for you.
Actually, now that I think about it, that would be an interesting theme…that evolution here on earth has placed us on top of the predatorial pecking order, and as such, we are as well-equipped as any other intelligent species in the galaxy, and if there’s one thing that humans do well, it’s fight.
Overall I liked Signs. I thought the basic idea of looking at an alien invasion from the pov. of just one family was quite original. I liked the doube meaning of “signs” and how it fit into the story of the minister’s loss of faith even if the ending was rather silly. In bits and pieces Signs was very good, both amusing and scary, even if the movie as a whole didn’t quite work.
I think the alleged plot-holes aren’t really that bad. For instance it’s entirely possible that the aliens lived on a planet without water and didn’t know it hurt them. It doesn’t really matter because the aliens weren’t the point of the film. Many of Hitchcock’s films have silly plot-holes but people still enjoy them.
ROFL funniest damn thing I’ve read all day. Nice one!
I liked signs ok for the first hour and a half. But that last ten minutes? Holy damn that was awful. One of the most contrived things I’ve seen in a while.