| Signs | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | M. Night Shyamalan |
| Written by | M. Night Shyamalan |
| Produced by |
|
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Tak Fujimoto |
| Edited by | Barbara Tulliver |
| Music by | James Newton Howard |
Production companies | |
| Distributed by | Buena Vista Pictures Distribution |
Release date |
|
Running time | 106 minutes[1][2][3] |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $72 million[4] |
| Box office | $408.2 million[4] |
Signs is a 2002 Americanscience fictionhorror thriller film written and directed byM. Night Shyamalan and produced by Shyamalan,Frank Marshall,Kathleen Kennedy andSam Mercer. The film was produced byTouchstone Pictures,Blinding Edge Pictures andThe Kennedy/Marshall Company. It was distributed byBuena Vista Pictures. StarringMel Gibson andJoaquin Phoenix, the story focuses on a formerEpiscopal priest named Graham Hess who discovers a series ofcrop circles in his cornfield and that the phenomenon is a result ofextraterrestrial life.Signs explores the themes of faith, kinship, and extraterrestrials.[5]
Signs premiered in theaters on August 2, 2002. The film was a financial success, grossing $408 million on a $72 million budget, becomingthe seventh-highest-grossing film of 2002, and was met with positive reviews from critics, with many praising its atmosphere, performances, cinematography, score and story, but others criticizing aspects of the script. The film was nominated for multiple awards, including those from theOnline Film Critics Society and theEmpire Awards. The film also won an award from theAmerican Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. The high definitionBlu-ray Disc edition of the film featuring the director's audio commentary, the making of the film and deleted scenes was released in the United States on June 3, 2008. The original motion picture soundtrack, which was composed byJames Newton Howard, was released on the opening day by theHollywood Records label.
FormerEpiscopal priest Graham Hess lives on arural farm inDoylestown, Pennsylvania, with hisasthmatic preteen son, Morgan, and young daughter, Bo. Graham's younger brother Merrill, a failed minor league baseball player, has been helping the family since Graham's wife Colleen died in a traffic collision six months earlier. Graham abandoned the church in the aftermath of the incident.
When largecrop circles appear in the Hesses' cornfield, they are initially attributed to vandals. However, other crop circles, and lights from invisible objects hovering over many of Earth's cities, begin appearing globally. One night, Graham and Merrill chase a figure into the field. Over the next several days, Graham glimpses another among the corn stalks, followed by strange clicking noises broadcast through Bo's oldbaby monitor. To the family's continued terror, news footage emerges out of Brazil showing, undeniably at that point, an alien that can blend into its surroundings.
After receiving a phone call from Ray Reddy, the man responsible for his wife's death, Graham travels to Reddy's home, finding him sitting in his car outside. Expressing remorse for Colleen's death, he warns Graham that one of the aliens is locked inside his pantry. Believing the aliens avoid water, he leaves for a lakeside. Graham enters the house and uses a kitchen knife to peer under the pantry door. A clawed hand emerges and swipes at Graham; he cuts off the fingers in a panic.
As the aliens' worldwide invasion begins, the family barricades themselves inside their house, taking shelter in the basement when the aliens break in. Morgan has an asthma attack and the family doesn't have his medication, but he survives the night. The family emerges the next morning after the radio reports the aliens have abruptly abandoned Earth as if something scared them off.
The alien previously trapped inside Reddy's pantry enters the house and takes Morgan hostage. Recalling Colleen's dying words, Graham tells Merrill to "swing away" using hisbaseball bat. The alien sprays Morgan with toxic gas from its wrist. Graham recovers his stricken son as Merrill engages the creature, discovering during the fight that water is toxic to the aliens. Merrill gradually weakens the alien by smashing several glasses of water, left by Bo throughout the house, at the creature, eventually killing it with a strike to the head that spills water from a glass on the creature's face. Outside, Graham administers Morgan's medication, realizing that his son's constricted lungs prevented him from inhaling the toxins, an act that Graham attributes to theintervention of ahigher power.
Months later, the Hess family has recovered from the ordeal and Graham returns to the church.
M. Night Shyamalan was a fan of the filmYou Can Count on Me and cast Rory Culkin andMark Ruffalo. Ruffalo required surgery for a tumor behind his ear and was unable to work on the film, so a week before filming the role was recast with Joaquin Phoenix.[8][9] The role of Graham was originally written to be an older man. Shyamalan approachedPaul Newman for the role, but he declined due to lack of interest, and he also approachedClint Eastwood, who declined due to scheduling conflicts.[10]
Shyamalan has said that the film's concept is the combination of two ideas – a family finding a crop circle on their property, and an "end of the world" premise.[11]
Signs was filmed in 2001.[12] All scenes shot on location were filmed inBucks County, Pennsylvania. The scenes of the house and cornfield were shot inside the campus ofDelaware Valley University, an agricultural college, where they had 40 acres (16 ha) of land to use. The scenes in the bookstore and the pizza shop were filmed inNewtown, Pennsylvania, and the pharmacy scene was shot inMorrisville, Pennsylvania.[13]
All music was composed by James Newton Howard.[14] The score was conducted by Pete Anthony and performed by theHollywood Studio Symphony.
| Signs | |
|---|---|
| Film score by | |
| Released | July 30, 2002 (2002-07-30) |
| Recorded | Todd Scoring Stage(Studio City, Los Angeles) JHN Studios(Santa Monica, California) |
| Genre | Orchestral |
| Length | 45:34 |
| Label | Hollywood |
| Producer | James Newton Howard, Thomas Drescher, Tom Drescher |
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |   [15] |
| Filmtracks | |
| SoundtrackNet | |
| No. | Title | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Main Titles" | 1:45 |
| 2. | "First Crop Circles" | 3:15 |
| 3. | "Roof Intruder" | 2:20 |
| 4. | "Brazilian Video" | 1:56 |
| 5. | "In the Cornfield" | 5:40 |
| 6. | "Baby Monitor" | 1:07 |
| 7. | "Recruiting Office" | 2:07 |
| 8. | "Throwing a Stone" | 5:47 |
| 9. | "Boarding Up the House" | 3:00 |
| 10. | "Into the Basement" | 5:23 |
| 11. | "Asthma Attack" | 3:42 |
| 12. | "The Hand of Fate (Part 1)" | 5:32 |
| 13. | "The Hand of Fate (Part 2)" | 3:47 |
| Total length: | 45:34 | |
The soundtrack generally received positive reviews. William Ruhlmann ofAllmusic stated in his review that:
WithSigns, composer James Newton Howard again joins director M. Night Shyamalan for their third collaboration followingThe Sixth Sense andUnbreakable, and clearly the film presents another thrilling encounter with the supernatural. From his opening "Main Theme," Howard ratchets up the tension, and his music thereafter alternates only between the ominous and the suspenseful. He overloads his lower tones, employing eight basses, five percussionists, and even a tuba, but also uses a large string section for short, fast, repetitive figures meant to keep viewers on the edges of their seats. This is not particularly imaginative music, just good old Saturday afternoon scary movie fare, the only distinguishing characteristic about it – consistent with Shyamalan's style – that it is so relentless. There's just no let up; dread pervades every moment of the director's films, to the point of emotional exhaustion for some, and the score has to have the same uncompromising approach, which can make it a little hard to take when listened to all the way through.[15]
OnRotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 76% based on reviews from 241 critics, with an average rating of 6.80/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "WithSigns, Shyamalan proves once again an expert at building suspense and giving audiences the chills."[1] OnMetacritic, the film scored 59 out of 100 based on 36 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[16] Audiences polled byCinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.[17]
Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars, writing: "M. Night Shyamalan'sSigns is the work of a born filmmaker, able to summon apprehension out of thin air. When it is over, we think not how little has been decided, but how much has been experienced ... At the end of the film, I had to smile, recognizing how Shyamalan has essentially ditched a payoff. He knows, as we all sense, that payoffs have grown boring."[18]Geoff Pevere ofThe Toronto Star gave the film a scoring of three out of five stars, saying "Ultimately,Signs – as original, interesting and ambitious as it is – is a post-9/11 movie of possibly the most dubious sort."[19]Nell Minow ofCommon Sense Media gave the film four out of five stars; she praised the casting and Shyamalan's direction, saying his "only flaw was not leaving anything to the audience's imagination".[20]
Mick LaSalle of theSan Francisco Chronicle gave the film one star out of four, thinking that the film had "few thoughts and no thrills."[21]Variety'sTodd McCarthy criticized the film for its lack of originality, writing: "After the overwroughtUnbreakable and now the meagerSigns, it's fair to speculate whether Shyamalan's persistence in replicating the otherworldly formula ofThe Sixth Sense might not be a futile and self-defeating exercise."[22] A.O. Scott ofThe New York Times wrote that "Mr. Shyamalan is undone by his pretensions" and that the theme of paternal grief "is articulated here with a heavy-handed, incoherent sentimentality that smothers real emotion." On the theme of faith, he concludes: "Mr. Shyamalan never gives us anything to believe in, other than his own power to solve problems of his own posing, and his command of a narrative logic is as circular – and as empty – as those bare patches out in the cornfield."[23]
In 2004, the Brazilian birthday party scene was ranked at No. 77 onBravo'sThe 100 Scariest Movie Moments.[24]
In a 2007 interview,Bong Joon-ho cited the film as an inspiration for his 2006 monster filmThe Host. He added: "Even though it deals with the alien invasion rather than creatures, I liked the fact that the film focused on the Mel Gibson's family, not on the aliens."[25]
Signs grossed $60,117,080 from 3,264 theaters in its opening weekend.[26] At the time of its release, the film had the second-highest August opening weekend, behindRush Hour 2.[27] It was the biggest opening weekend of Mel Gibson's career, surpassingRansom, and earned more than Disney's previous best for a live-action non-sequel, not based on existing popular source material, held byPearl Harbor.[28] The film went on to gross $227,966,634 domestically and $180,281,283 internationally, for a total of $408,247,917 worldwide.[4] It ranked only behindThe Sixth Sense in Shyamalan's box office success and grossing more thanThe Village andSplit.
Signs was released onVHS andDVD on January 7, 2003.[2]
The DVD release includes somedeleted scenes:
In addition to being aTHX certified release, the DVD also featured a documentary and storyboards.[29] It was the second top DVDvideo rental in the United States during the first quarter of 2003, earning$34,700,000 (equivalent to $59,000,000 in 2024) in US DVD rental revenue by March 2003.[30]
played equally well among genders and was "consistent from 10 to 60" among the ages of moviegoers
