Signs (Vista Series)
List Price:
Our Price: $10.49
You Save: $4.50 (30%)
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Buy Used: from $0.33 (click here)
Category: DVD
See more DVD releases
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
DVD Cover Information
Actor: Clifford David, Joaquin Phoenix, Lanny Flaherty, Mel Gibson, Rory CulkinDVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 106 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-01-07
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Touchstone Pictures
Movie Reviews of Signs (Vista Series)
Movie Review: Total crap, an utter waste of time. The surface action is dumb and the deeper message is dumber.
Summary: 1 Stars
SPOILER ALERT
Many reviewers here complained about the ridiculous plot holes and I agree. It's full of holes.
I see a lot of movies and I will walk if it looks lousy. There's 20+ movies to choose from, why waste time on a lousy one? If I hear lame dialog, a trite or cliche script, if I roll my eyes more than twice, I'm outta there. If the writer and director are lousy, they're not going to get any better. An exception to this is when they hire another writer or director after firing the lame one. An example of this is "The Muppets Take Manhattan," where the first half is lousy, but the second half is good and even great in some parts.
I walked on "Signs" after about 40 minutes and didn't look back. However, a family member insisted that it was good and all came together in the end, so I went back and watched the entire movie, start to end. Boy was I sorry, I should have stayed away.
The movie is ridiculous on various levels, but besides that, it has nothing worthwhile to offer.
As soon as the aliens came into the story, I was able to accurately predict the entire story: Aliens may or may not be here. As the movie progresses, the evidence of the aliens becomes more pronounced until we begin to see glimpses of them. From there we will go into the climax where we have a showdown with the aliens and win. That's a synopsis of the plot and who, I mean who, is going to say there is anything at all original about that? No one over the age of 13.
The movie plays out just as I predicted. But there's some quasi-religious mumbo-jumbo thrown in there that's really the point of the story. Fine, the only problem is that the mumbo-jumbo is so utterly ridiculous that it's laughable.
Unless I'm missing something (unlikely), the plot is this: God causes Gibson's wife to get horribly injured in an accident where she suffers in agony until Gibson can get there, whereupon she delivers a coded message from God to Gibson, without Gibson realizing it, and then she dies. This accident causes Gibson to lose his faith in God. Meanwhile, God has caused another family member that is a budding baseball star to suffer an injury and his career and life are ruined. Then, God causes the kid to have asthma and an irrational preoccupation with water, resulting in half glasses of water being left all over the house. Then, God causes all these circumstances to work together during an alien invasion of earth such that the coded message, the asthma, the water, and the sports career work together to defeat the aliens in the house and save lives. Gibson sees how God has wrought all of this and regains his faith. If that's it, that's the most utterly ridiculous, blasphemous, lame, contrived, etc story I've ever heard of.
So I'm wondering two things: 1: Is my understanding of the story complete and my laughter is justified, or did I miss something? And 2: How on earth did the guy that wrote the brilliant "The 6th Sense" write this load of tripe? It would seem that his contract with the movie studio includes a "right of subcontract" and he subcontracted his swimming pool cleaning guy to write this.
Summary of Signs (Vista Series)
From M. Night Shyamalan, the writer/director of THE SIXTH SENSE and UNBREAKABLE, comes the story of the Hess family in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, who wake up one morning to find a 500-foot crop circle in their backyard. Graham Hess (Mel Gibson) and his family are told extraterrestrials are responsible for the sign in their field. They watch, with growing dread, the news of crop circles being found all over the world. SIGNS is the emotional story of one family on one farm as they encounter the terrifying last moments of life as the world is being invaded. "It's easy for a filmmaker to blow up the world -- but what Shyamalan does is much riskier. He tries to blow our minds. I was engaged by every inch of SIGNS." - Richard Roeper, Ebert & Roeper.This B movie with noble aspirations is the work of a gifted filmmaker whose storytelling falls short of his considerable stylistic flair. While addressing crises of faith in the framework of an alien-invasion thriller, M. Night Shyamalan (in his follow-up to The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable) favors atmospheric tension over explanatory plotting. He injects subtle humor into expertly spooky scenes, but the story suffers from too many lapses in logic. The film's faults are greatly compensated by the performance of Mel Gibson as a widower whose own crisis of faith coincides with the appearance of mysterious crop circles in his Pennsylvania cornfield... and hundreds of UFOs around the globe. With his brother (Joaquin Phoenix) and two young children (Rory Culkin, Abigail Breslin), the lapsed minister perceives this phenomenal occurrence as a series of signs and portents, while Shyamalan pursues a spookfest with War of the Worlds overtones. It's effective to a point, but vaguely hollow at its core. --Jeff Shannon
Mystery & Suspense DVD Video
DVD Video
- Action & Adventure
- African American Cinema
- Animation
- Anime & Manga
- Art House & International
- Classics
- Comedy
- Cult Movies
- Documentary
- Drama
- Educational
- Fitness & Yoga
- Gay & Lesbian
- Horror
- Kids & Family
- Military & War
- Music Video & Concerts
- Musicals & Performing Arts
- Mystery & Suspense
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Special Interests
- Sports
- Television
- Westerns
Movies most talked about in General Zombie's Top 30 Horror Films
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Restored Authorized Edition)Release date: 2002-09-24; DVD
Best price: $10.79
Price in other shops:
Dracula - The Legacy Collection (Dracula / Dracula (1931 Spanish Version) / Dracula's Daughter / Son of Dracula / House of Dracula)UNIVERSAL STUDIOS HOME ENTERTAIN.; Release date: 2004-04-27; DVD
Best price: $17.96
Price in other shops:
Carrie (Special Edition)TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX HOME ENT; Release date: 2001-08-28; DVD
Best price: $6.98
Price in other shops:
The Return of the Living Dead (Collector's Edition)TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX HOME ENT; Release date: 2007-09-11; DVD
Best price: $11.82
Price in other shops:
The Fly (Two-Disc Collector's Edition)Twentieth Century Fox; Release date: 2005-10-04; DVD
Best price: $11.18
Price in other shops:
The Shining (Two-Disc Special Edition)Warner Brothers; Release date: 2007-10-23; DVD
Best price: $7.38
Price in other shops:
Audition (Uncut Special Edition)Lions Gate; Release date: 2005-08-23; DVD
Best price: $19.97
The Wicker Man (Limited Edition)Release date: 2001-08-21; DVD
Best price: $68.95
The Exorcist (25th Anniversary Special Edition)Release date: 1998-12-01; DVD
Best price: $49.00
HalloweenSTARZ HOME ENTERTAINMENT; Release date: 2007-08-14; DVD
Best price: $6.17
Price in other shops:
Similar DVD Movies
The HappeningRelease date: 2008-10-07; DVD
Best price: $3.87
Price in other shops:
What Lies BeneathPARAMOUNT PICTURES; Release date: 2001-01-30; DVD
Best price: $3.84
Price in other shops:
Independence Day (Five Star Collection)Release date: 2000-06-27; DVD
Best price: $8.90
Price in other shops:
Gladiator (Widescreen Edition)CROWE/PHOENIX/NIELSEN; Release date: 2003-08-19; DVD
Best price: $11.05
Price in other shops:
War of the Worlds (Widescreen Edition)Paramount; Release date: 2005-11-22; DVD
Best price: $3.78
Price in other shops:
The Others (Two-Disc Collector's Edition)Release date: 2002-05-14; DVD
Best price: $4.62
Price in other shops:
Lady in the Water (Widescreen Edition)Warner Brothers; Release date: 2006-12-19; DVD
Best price: $0.41
Price in other shops:
Unbreakable (Two-Disc Vista Series)Release date: 2001-06-26; DVD
Best price: $4.97
Price in other shops:
The Village (Widescreen Vista Series)PHOENIX,JOAQUIN; Release date: 2005-01-11; DVD
Best price: $4.01
Price in other shops:
The Sixth Sense (Collector's Edition Series)WILLIS,BRUCE; Release date: 2000-03-28; DVD
Best price: $4.55
Price in other shops: