It's not Hitchcock

“Signs” is the latest, (his third one that anyone has heard about) offering from director M. Night Shyamalan. It is also his worst. I felt mixed about "The Sixth Sense" and "Unbreakable." They were enjoyable stories but I always felt cheated and the gimmicky nature of the films work against them. Sure enough, watching "Signs," I found myself wondering what the twist ending was going to be. Unfortunately, the twist ending in "Signs," unlike Shyamalan’s previous two offerings is both stupid and predictable.

It is best to think of "Signs" in a very grid-like way. It's really two films in one with three separate acts. The first film, about the regaining of faith by a priest who had lost it is didactic and schmaltzy. The "everything has a purpose even if you don’t know it” doesn’t work in this context at all. The second film about an alien invasion of earth is mixed. The first two parts, the discovery of crop circles, the suspense of the unseen, the unknown, are genuinely creepy and well done. However, once the aliens arrive on earth and are visible, the third act if you will, the movie gets ridiculous and spectacularly un-scary. People in green suites with big eyes just don’t do it for me. The ending, the tying together of all the knots, is one of the most ridiculous endings to a big film I have ever seen.

After his surprise hit "The Sixth Sense" in 1999 and certainly after Unbreakable a year later, M. Night Shyamalan drew numerous comparisons to the master of suspense movies, Alfred Hitchcock. Shyamalan is not the first director to be likened to Hitchcock, nor will he be the last, and certainly not the least talented. Some of the comparisons are valid. Shyamalan, like Hitchcock, likes employing a methodical pace, letting the drama and suspense unfold around the plot. Also like Hitchcock, Shyamalan likes to shock people. That is about where the comparisons end. Never mind that Hitchcock is responsible for possibly more of the greatest films ever than any other director.

"Signs" brings further light to the differences between the two. First, Shyamalan writes his own scripts. This worked to varying degrees with his previous films, but it does not work with Signs. The writer Shyamalan wrote a script that boxes the director Shyamalan so that he has a difficult time getting out of ridiculous situations. Hitchcock, like many directors, worked on the script by directing the writers to create something that would fit Hitchcock as a director. Shyamalan has not learned to do that yet. The bigger difference between the two, however, is how they approach the medium of the cinema. Shyamalan is a classic borrower. This is evident in Signs which feels at parts like a movie we’ve seen, but can’t quite place. It is, to a large extent, a retelling of "War of the Worlds," a lot of the technique from John Irving’s "A Prayer for Owen Meany," a little bit from "Independence Day" and one scene from an episode of "Homicide: Life on the Street."

There is nothing wrong with being a borrower whatsoever, the vast majority of directors fall into that category. Hitchcock however, was something special. Not content with merely captivating audiences, he took to expanding the nature of cinema. These experiments worked with varying degrees of success; "Rope" as a single shot, the entire film of "Lifeboat," like the classic "Rear Window" shot in one small location, the 3D attempt of "Dial M for Murder," and so on. Even early on, Hitchcock experimented, making the first British sound film in "Blackmail" and doing the perhaps the first sound bridge in "The 39 Steps." "Signs" gives me the impression that Shyamalan has too much control over a medium he has not yet fully grasped.