Bigger is not better, and more is not more. Finally, someone gets that! So thank goodness for M. Night Shyamalan. He may have faltered with UNBREAKABLE, but he’s back and here to stay. SIGNS is such pure genius, on so many levels. An alien invasion of earth told on the smallest scale possible, yet still so successfully. Spaceships blowing up buildings in INDEPENDENCE DAY are fine, but this achieves almost the same without any overblown effects. And like THE SIXTH SENSE, the horror can lie in the build up or the mere suggestion of it. For example, a dog is heard barking and barking until he’s strangled and killed. We’re not shown anything, and yet we don’t need to be. What we imagine is perfect. But, you still get the payoff. Sooner or later, we see what we wanted to, unlike the stupid BLAIR WITCH. Hey, notice how nobody even talks about that movie anymore?

      SIGNS is fantastic and has a wonderful message about faith. Time Magazine predicts that Shyamalan will be the next Spielberg. Absolutely! SIGNS also did something usually unprecedented. It was No. 1 for a week and then lost out for two, only to be No. 1 again for two more weeks. Maybe this has happened before, but it’s a rarity nonetheless. That’s what I call staying power.