Signs

The next Speilberg, M. Night Shyamalan isn't. Newsweek said he was on a cover for this movie's release, but the main similarity Shyamalan has with Speilberg is his ability to do camera sweeps through corn the way Speilberg did it over water in Jaws. Signs is a first draft version of an alien take over and how it effects a rural family. I say first draft because the film has many avenues of interest that could all be the center of the film, but the film doesn't hone on any. Speilberg, at his best, made great entertainment in stories of aliens and humans, but he did it always with a larger theme. This was true in E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. He also had clear perspectives of who the protaganists were. E.T. was told from the objective of children and the Encounters by adults. Signs is a family drama, but has no signifying emotional core to make that perspective relevant. The story is generic and uses the family members to just be able to tell the story from numerous point of views, but the multiplicity adds up to nothing. By the end Signs looks like only an alien takeover movie and tries better to be a thrill instead of anything that is emotionally captivating. The movie also screws up a vital plot point. The story says the aliens can't take in water, but that's dumb because our atmosphere is made up of h20. The filmmakers should have known better, but at least a better story wouldn't have made that mistake look so bad. I would have been able to forgive.