M. Night Shyamalan is no doubt one of Hollywood’s resident rubber bands, relentlessly snapping back and forth between some high-profile home runs to borderline unwatchable slogs and everything in between and beyond. Indeed, if any filmmaker so perfectly encapsulated a dice roll, it’s Shyamalan.
Ideally, most moviegoers will know Shyamalan for the psychological thriller The Sixth Sense, the masterpiece that first bestowed him with the “twist ending guy” label — a reputation that mostly hasn’t done him much good since then (see: Old). But, before he hit an ill-fated hot streak that involves a The Last Airbender adaptation we don’t speak of, Shyamalan went from strength to strength following The Sixth Sense, namely in the form of Signs, which a few residents of r/horror were all too happy to pat on the back over 20 years later.
Featuring a young Joaquin Phoenix and a not-yet-off-the-rails Mel Gibson in the leading roles, Signs follows the plight of two brothers, one of whom is the father of two small children, who begin to discover crop circles in the cornfields of the farm they reside at. As the ominous event repeats itself in different parts of the world, one of the brothers begins to worry that it’s only the precursor to something terrifying.
On top of serving up the spook factor that one would want from a Shyamalan film, Signs has the extra merit of just being a solid movie on all fronts, from the cinematography to the performances to even the script — where the filmmaker tends to stumble even in some of his better pieces (we’re still quite insulted by that Knock at the Cabin ending).
Indeed, for all the hiccups he’s had over the years, we’d be remiss to forget the highs that Shyamalan has granted us in his time, and for every The Happening, there’s a Signs waiting in the wings to restore your faith in more ways than one.