Signs - Zeichen

Der geniale Film Signs - Zeichen ist ein ultimatives emotionales Erlebnis, ein Gänsehaut-Orgasmus und nicht zuletzt auch ein geistliches Streicheln, das dazu beiträgt, dass der Film nicht so schnell alt wird. Ein schöner Shyamalan-Film mit einem famosen Soundtrack von James Newton Howard, der oft zitiert wird. (07.10.2002)

Gewissermaßen ist dies eine sehr lustige Aktualisierung des invasiven Science-Fiction-Genres, gewissermaßen unangenehm klaustrophobisch, und gewissermaßen angenehm übertrieben (Hütchen), in anderer Hinsicht wirkt dies jedoch völlig bedrückt durch den Versuch, etwas Weitreichendes zu bieten und etwas mehr als die intime Geschichte einer Krise in einer Familie, welche durch mysteriöse Zeichen von oben umgeben ist. Ich habe es genossen, das ganze als eine der Varianten der klassischen Erzählung darüber zu betrachten, die Autorität des Vaters mittels einer eine Katastrophe wiederherzustellen. In dieser Hinsicht erinnert der Film leicht an Spielbergs Krieg der Welten. Steven ist jedoch ein viel besserer Erzähler und auch Entertainer, ohne gedanklich gesehen hinter Shya hinterherzuhinken (das würde ja auch nicht allzu sehr gehen). (13.06.2013)

An above-average thriller (a variation of Independence Day) in the typical chatty style of Shyalaman that generates an unsettling atmosphere from the beginning to the end, where things fall considerably apart due to the not very good look of the aliens. Mel Gibson carries the film on his shoulders, he hardly ever leaves the screen. Signs doesn’t get a full score mostly because of the ending, which is way too American and doesn’t fit the film’s atmosphere. (30.12.2007)

I’ll start with the good things. I liked how Shyamalan used the girl's obsession with water and Merrill's baseball ability to "swing hard" at the end. Both, seemingly unrelated to the plot, resulted in a successful twist. It’s also true that some scenes are brilliantly shot and lethally tense, Shyamalan really knows how to “polish a turd”. And now the worse: Shyamalan tries to tackle a lot of issues, like the question of faith, parenthood and on so forth. It disrupts the coherence of the plot and often gets boring even. Some scenes (a wannabe emotionally tense scene with the prayer before a meal, the dialogue with the dying wife) seem terribly unnatural. Shyamalan, as a devout Catholic, solves his own problems, he is not very good at psychology and the result is a strange mess – something between a psychological film and a pure horror movie. Those two things don’t fit together and things end up falling apart. (18.05.2003)

Can humor go hand in hand with slowly built suspense and a thick, disconcerting atmosphere? Can you combine a sci-fi movie about invasion with questions of faith and destiny? Isn’t there an unwritten rule that “the dog never dies"? If Shyamalan had come up with this concept a decade later, everybody would have laughed at him. But he came up with it at a time when he was unarguably still at his creative zenith and managed to concentrate his talents on making one of the top thrillers of the beginning of the twenty-first century. It has just one weak spot: the very end when he proves once and for all whether or not he was one of those people who believes/hopes that everything happens for a specific reason. I’m not one of them and so in such a well-thought out movie, which to a certain extent Signs is, I felt that the ending (but not necessarily the overall message) was really unsatisfying and, to a certain extent, cheap. If it had been less ambitious and made do with just three (?) days of the first contact through the eyes of a regular family, it would have been more than enough for a good movie. (20.11.2003)