M. Night Shyamalan built his reputation on twist endings, and Signs is the one that defined his style. It follows Graham Hess, a former pastor played by Mel Gibson, who loses his faith after his wife dies in a car accident and watches his son and daughter grow distant. Then aliens arrive.
The film opened 24 years ago, and it remains the clearest example of what Shyamalan does best: set up a mystery, build tension, and then turn the answer inside out. The twist is memorable, and it is central to the film’s identity. Gibson plays Graham as a man still grieving, not a hero ready for a fight. His daughter Merrill, played by Abigail Breslin, is the one who notices the signs first, and her curiosity drives the plot forward.
Trailer, via M. Night Shyamalan.
The Farm and the Symbols
The cornfield scene is the film’s high point. Shyamalan stages the arrival with a long take, showing the family watching the ground crack and a visitor emerge from the earth. It is tense, and it earns its tension because the earlier scenes have established the stakes. The visitor is not hostile at first, but the family knows something is wrong. The film holds back the reveal, letting the audience feel the dread alongside the characters.
The symbols themselves are the film’s central mystery. They appear in the grass, on trees, and later on the walls of the house. Each one is a letter, a number, or a shape, and the family spends the middle stretch trying to decipher them. This is where the film starts to strain. The symbols are clever, but they are also arbitrary. There is no logic to them beyond the story’s need for a puzzle, and the answers feel less like solutions and more like excuses to keep the plot moving.
Mel Gibson and the Cast
Mel Gibson carries the film. He plays Graham as a man who has lost everything, including his faith, and he finds it again in the face of something truly alien. The performance is restrained, and it works because the script gives him room to grieve before it asks him to act. Gibson has never been a flashy actor, and here he doesn’t need to be. He is simply a man doing the best he can.
The supporting cast is solid. Breslin plays Merrill with a mix of fear and wonder. She carries a scene in the middle of the film that shows her character’s growing courage. Shyamalan directs the actors to play their roles honestly, even when the material around them is silly. That honesty sells the film more often than the effects do.
The Twist and Its Limits
The twist is the reason people remember Signs. I won’t spoil it here, but it is a classic Shyamalan reveal: the visitor is not what it seems, and the whole film has been about something else. The problem is that the twist is not earned. The clues are there, but they are not meaningful. The film tells you the answer in the final minutes, and the revelation feels more like a trick than a payoff.
The twist also changes the meaning of everything that came before it. A scene that felt ominous becomes funny, a symbol that seemed threatening becomes trivial. That shift is jarring, and it leaves the viewer feeling cheated rather than surprised. The film is building toward a moment of terror, and it delivers something else entirely.
Comparing Signs to Other Alien Stories
| Film | Central Element |
|---|---|
| Signs | A twist reveal |
| Other alien stories | The encounter itself |
Shyamalan’s film stands apart from other stories about visitors. Signs is about the twist, while other films are about the encounter itself. The comparison is instructive. Signs is trying to be both a mystery and a thriller, and it cannot hold both together.
The film’s weakest moments come in the middle stretch, where the pacing drags and the symbols stop feeling mysterious and start feeling like filler. The film is too long, and it loses momentum in the stretch between the storm and the landing. The final act speeds up, but it is a relief rather than a triumph.
The symbols are clever, but they are also arbitrary.
That line captures the film’s central problem. Everything about Signs is built around a puzzle, and the puzzle is the problem. The symbols are interesting in theory, but they are not interesting in practice. They exist to generate suspense, not to resolve it.
The film is not a failure. It is a good movie that reaches for greatness and misses. The performances are strong, the setup is well done, and the climax is genuinely tense. But the twist undoes the work the film has done, and it leaves the viewer with a hollow feeling rather than a satisfying one.
Signs is worth watching for the first hour and a half. After that, it is a slog. The final ten minutes are worth seeing, but they are not worth the journey to get there.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.
