Reviews: Signs (2002)
December 5, 2007
By CT
Signs (2002) tells the suspenseful story of one family’s time together as they prepare for and go through an extraterrestrial invasion. The story takes place in Bucks County, Pennsylvania where the Hess family wakes up one morning to find an enormous crop circle in their backyard. As the film moves forward, it becomes more and more obvious that aliens are in fact responsible for the unusual behavior around the town.
Mel Gibson plays the roll of Graham Hess – a fallen away priest who is struggling with the reality of his wife’s death, along with his younger brother Merrill, his son Morgan (Culkin) and his daughter Bo (Breslin). The viewer is shown flashbacks of Graham confronting his wife Colleen (Patrica Kalember) as she is pinned between a tree and a Suburban during the last moments of her life. As Graham and Colleen spend their final moments together, Colleen passes away in mid-sentence.
After his wife’s tragic death, Gibson’s character loses all of his faith and completely abandons God. He removes all Christian paraphernalia from his home, ceases to say grace with his family before daily meals, and no longer wears his clerical collar. At times, Graham Hess even seems to show relentless hate towards the Heavenly Father. The loss of faith in Gibson’s character, and the aftereffects that lead up to his realization of God’s divine providence single-handedly elevates Signs to a powerful piece of cinema. In Signs, viewers are given the opportunity to engage the divine providence of Jesus Christ in Gibson’s trials and tribulations throughout the duration of the film.
Not only is Signs a dazzling white-knuckler about a family’s last moments of life before a worldwide extraterrestrial invasion, it contains profound religious significance. Signs causes us to ask ourselves: “Is it possible that there are no coincidences?” It reminds us that there are times in our life that make absolutely no sense at all. Sometimes these happenings are tragic, and may indeed cause us to suffer and to question the very roots that make us up as individuals. By the films end, we are reminded that every single one of these events in our lives happens for a profoundly significant reason.
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