Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9479 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-03-31
• Rating: Suitable for 12 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Dubbed, PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, Greek, Icelandic, Norwegian, Russian, Swedish
• Dubbed in: Russian
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 102 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Director-writer M Night Shyamalan brings his distinctive, oblique approach to aliens in Signs after tackling ghosts (The Sixth Sense) and superheroes (Unbreakable). With Mel Gibson replacing Bruce Willis as the traditional Shyamalan hero--a family man traumatised by loss--and leaving urban Philadelphia for the Pennsylvania sticks, the film starts with crop circles showing up on the property Gibson shares with his ex-ballplayer brother (Joaquin Phoenix) and his two troubled pre-teen kids (pay attention--all these character quirks turn out to be important). Though the world outside is undergoing a crisis of Independence Day-sized proportions, Shyamalan limits the focus to this family, who retreat into their cellar when "intruders" arrive from lights in the sky and set out to "harvest" them.

Just as Unbreakable slowly revealed itself to be Superman re-thought as an intense personal drama, this is The Birds redone as a religious drama of faith lost and perhaps regained. The tone is less certain than the earlier films--some of the laughs seem unintentional and Gibson's performance isn't quite on a level with Willis's commitment--but Shyamalan still directs the suspense and shock dramas better than anyone else.

On the DVD: Signs has THX-certified Dolby Digital Surround Sound which reproduces in the home exactly as the scary sounds that creeped you out in the cinema. A selection of deleted scenes are mostly tiny, but there's a self-reflexive joke (wisely dropped but worth preserving) as Gibson wishes his dead wife were here in the crisis because she was so smart: "She always knew how movies would end." A six-part making-of goes deeper than the usual puff-piece, including an interesting alternative to a commentary track as Shyamalan talks through a précis of clips and on-set snippets. A tradition continued from the Sixth Sense and Unbreakable DVDs is an extract from Pictures, "Night's first alien film". It's a teenage camcorder effort in which the future A-list Hollywoodian is menaced by a tiny Halloween-masked robot. Also included are a "multi-angle storyboards" feature, subtitles in a clutch of languages and eerie menu screens. --Kim Newman

Special Features
DTS soundtrack
The Making of Signs:
- Looking for Signs – DVD screenwriting diary
- Building Signs – Storyboard featurette
- Making Signs – Audio Commentary from director and crew
- The Effects of Signs – Visual Effects
- Signs: The Music – Featurette on composer James Newton Howard
- Full Circle – Finishing the film featurette

4 Deleted scenes
Storyboards
Night’s First Alien Movie

Synopsis
It's contaminated. That's what pint-sized Bo (Abigail Breslin) says about every glass of water that she tries to drink, then rejects. This is just one in a long list of strange occurrences that are changing the lives of the Hess family. Things go awry when Graham Hess (Mel Gibson) and his brother, Merrill (Joaquin Phoenix), awake early one morning to find the dogs barking and the children--Bo, and her brother Morgan (Rory Culkin)--wandering bleary eyed in the corn fields. They discover a pattern of perfectly carved crop circles left the night before. Trying not to overreact, Graham ignores the media frenzy that has permeated all television and radio stations, and even shrugs off the oddly familiar information that Morgan reads in his book about extraterrestrials invading earth. The real challenge for Graham is to find the faith he needs to pull himself, and his family, through this unexplainable series of events.
SIGNS is the long-anticipated film from writer-director M. Night Shyamalan (THE SIXTH SENSE, UNBREAKABLE), a suspenseful and uniquely chilling family story.

Customer Reviews

Signs
“Signs” is a very difficult film to both describe and classify as it covers a lot of different genres and yet doesn’t fit really comfortably into any of them. Certainly it’s a very intriguing and at times, thrilling film and yet it also somehow doesn’t quite deliver the full results.

Graham Hess is the widowed Pennsylvania farmer who lives in a remote farm along with his two young children and his younger brother, Merrill. Very early one morning both Graham and Merrill are awoken from their beds to find both children wandering around in the field of corn by their house. Investigating further Graham finds a series of huge crop circles decorating his land. The national news is reporting other sightings of such crop circles, mostly in India, and when UFOs are spotted and filmed in Mexico fears and suspicions start to build.

The strange goings on continue around the Hess farm, the dogs bark and turn nasty, Graham’s daughter Bo finds the water tastes strange and his son, Morgan seems to be far too well informed on aliens and methods to stop them reading our minds! When actual sightings of aliens are not only being reported but also being experienced by Graham we know that this dedicated and honourable man will do all in his power to defend his family.

As I say it’s a most strange film to classify because it’s not really a horror and neither is it a true thriller, and yet it has some of the best tension building scenes I’ve ever seen. There are several leap out of your seat moments and also scenes when nothing actually happens and yet you find yourself hiding behind a cushion.

The performances are more solid than breathtaking, Mel Gibson is quite strangely cast as the rather reticent Graham Hess but he’s given great support by Joaquin Phoenix as Merrill and the two children, Rory Culkin & Abigail Breslin are both charming and extremely competent actors.

The film isn’t perfect though, I question the effectiveness of the sub-plot concerning Graham’s wife and also the fact he is a lapsed priest. Whilst the two factors were interesting, I felt they served more to detract than add to the plot and tension. It’s also one of those films where you find yourself think that had it been made with a complete cast of no-bodies it may well have ended up as “the surprise hit of the season!” Instead it’s sort of become one of Mel Gibson’s lesser known films.

Mind you it’s still an excellently effective piece of film work and I would recommend all to watch this.

Interesting but flawed
I liked this film. It wasn't the best film I've ever seen, nor was it the worst. It certainly doesn't deserve the censure it has received in previous reviews. Having seen Sixth Sense, but not Unbreakable, I choose not to judge it as part of a trilogy, but to assess it on it's own merits.

Signs deals with the question of life beyond that which exists on Earth, both physically (represented in form of the aliens) and metaphysically (represented by Hess's crisis of faith and whether there is someone up there looking out for us).

The film worked best before the aliens were seen (althought the footage of the Brazilian birthday party scared me half to death), and the tension was built up well. I thought Gibson and Phoenix were excellent, and the children were portrayed well.

I don't have a problem with the alien's not knowing how to open doors, or indeed not having anticipated problems with water. Nothing is shown of the interiors of the alien crafts nor of their homeworlds, deliberately I believe. We simply don't know the capabilities of the aliens.

I do however have a problem with being patronised by the flash backs to earlier parts of the film - when Hess realises where he has seen the alien in his house before etc. It worked well in Sixth Sense, where is was an appropriate device, but was out of place here. I think the director needs to give his viewers slightly more credit than that!

The religious element was dealt with poorly, and it seemed that Hess's dilemma was 2 dimensional. Also I've never heard of non-Catholic clergy being referred to as Father. Just a thought.

The ending was a bit "Hollywood", which was a shame, and it was unsatisfying in so much as there was no explanation for why the aliens came or why they left. But that is exactly what redeems it above run of the mill sci-fi thrillers.

Makes you think, makes you shake your head, but all in all not a waste of an evening.

A favourite :)
I know lots of people on Amazon haven't been impressed by this film, and they've a right to their opinions. I guess it's just people like me who enjoyed it.

I love and hate this film. I hate it because it still gives me nightmares sometimes (I have a phobia of aliens, started in childhood by ET...), but I love it because it tells a beautiful story with the concept of an alien invasion as a chilling backdrop. A man who loses his faith after his wife is killed in a freak accident, then finds it again after (through perhaps fate) his son's life is saved.

I found the aliens terrifying-that first time when Graham (Mel Gibson) looks out the window and sees one in the dark is one of my scariest movie moments ever.

It also has a beautiful and often chilling score by James Newton Howard. I had to buy it. Look out for the amazing music during the climax.