'Signs' gives a smart, skillful story of faith
M. Night Shyamalan's engaging new thriller "Signs," like his 1999 classic "The Sixth Sense," is a story haunted by someone who isn't there. In the home of Graham Hess (Mel Gibson), a farmer and former pastor in rural Pennsylvania, we see a brief glimpse of a dressmaker's mannequin, with a never-to-be-finished blue dress fitted on it. Two sad-eyed children roam the house; Hess himself quietly stares into space, preoccupied. Colleen Hess (Patricia Kalember, in flashbacks) is gone, and her house is in mourning.
But "Signs," despite its supernatural elements, isn't a ghost story. Colleen's sudden death (which takes place before the action of "Signs" begins) has triggered a loss of faith in Graham, who has left his parish and hung up his clerical collar. "We are all on our own," he tells his children. The accident — the opposite of a miracle — has led Graham to believe that everything is coincidence. There are no signs, he says, no miracles.
When mysterious crop circles appear on the Hess farm, echoing frightening events on their television screen, Graham questions his lack of faith.
"Signs," ultimately, is a story of faith masquerading as a scarefest; it's a deeply serious film with an unexpected dose of humor. Perhaps responding to criticism that "Unbreakable," his second film, was overly dour and ponderous, the writer-director has sprinkled "Signs" with laughs, many stemming from the camaraderie of Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix, as Graham's brother Merrill. (The humor doesn't always work, though. One scene with a law-enforcement official, who speaks his lines as if he's doing a "Saturday Night Live" spoof, is just puzzling.)
None of the humor detracts, though, from the scary-movie pleasures. Shyamalan has an uncanny knack for knowing just how much to show us: One scene, when a barely discernable dark figure suddenly crosses a path, gave me more shivers than a November wind. And the audacious plot sometimes feels too big for the screen (although it's been tackled in other movies), but you've got to admire Shyamalan for taking it on, even if it does feel a bit too tidy at the end.
Gibson, his face looking newly lined, is wonderfully cast; this role lets him take on a gentle, fatherly quality that we rarely see from him. (In his clerical collar, with his broad shoulders and boxy head, he looks timeless, like a centuries-old portrait of a minister.) Phoenix, who does have a ballpark resemblance to Gibson, brings a nice, slight lack of focus to Merrill, a man who's just marking time.
And, as the requisite freaked-out little kids, Rory Culkin ("You Can Count on Me") and Abigail Breslin are quite effective at looking so frightened that you're afraid they might throw up. Like Haley Joel Osment in "The Sixth Sense," neither succumbs to cuteness: Culkin holds his shoulders tight, always looking like he's shivering; Breslin, pale and round-eyed, has a scary stillness.
"Signs" lacks the elegant simplicity of "The Sixth Sense," nor does it have a clever last-act twist that explains everything. But it's a smart, skillful movie from a writer-director who's only 31 years old, but already a master of blending the chills of fright with the warmth of love.
Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725 or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com.
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