It’s a weird time to be a UFO enthusiast — especially one who finds lights in the sky inspiring rather than frightening. As real-life conspiracy theories flourish and big screen space horror is set lightyears away, I find myself contextualizing my UFO feelings in a surprisingly rural story. To me, the quintessential UFO horror movie is M. Night Shyamalan’s 2002 film Signs.
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Signs is a sci-fi thriller set on a farm in rural Pennsylvania, starring Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix as brothers Graham and Merrill Hess. For what it’s worth, if you haven’t seen this movie you may still be familiar with the parody Scary Movie 3. However, if you’re around my age you may also remember Signs as the first time you consciously thought of UFOs as frightening rather than fascinating. The movie tells an original story while still playing with the archetypal concept of UFOs in American pop culture.
The movie begins by tackling a hot topic in the Ufology community: crop circles. In real life, these have mostly been debunked as pranks, contrivances or environmental coincidences, and in the movie the Hess family brushes them off first as well. Instead, the beginning of the movie focuses on their family struggles — Graham was an Episcopal priest until his wife died in a car crash about six months ago, and he lost his faith. Merrill’s minor league baseball career stopped short and now he is here on the farm trying to help his brother, niece and nephew all process their grief.
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In the midst of this, crop circles begin to take over the mainstream news, and they get harder and harder for Graham and Merrill to ignore. The brothers begin to see strange figures appearing in their field but they’re unable to catch them. They also hear odd, inhuman noises through a baby monitor. Before they know it, a worldwide alien invasion is underway.
Aside from the Hess brothers, the key cast members are Graham’s son Morgan (Rory Culkin) and his daughter Bo (Abigail Breslin). They are also visited by their friend and local police officer Caroline Paski (Cherry Jones) and their neighbor Ray Reddy, who is played by Shyamalan himself. Behind the scenes, the credits were stacked as well — producers included Kathleen Kennedy, Frank Marshall and Sam Mercer.
Signs was filmed in Pennsylvania on a budget of $72 million, and was considered a box office success with an international gross of over $408 million. It was Shyamalan’s second-biggest earner at the time behind The Sixth Sense. The movie also sold well on VHS and DVD, and is beloved by film buffs for its extensive bonus content including deleted scenes, documentary featurettes and storyboards. This movie alone earned nearly $35 million in DVD rental revenue between January and March of 2003.
At the time of this writing, Signs has a 75 percent fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes, with an average rating of 6.9 out of 10 among 240 trusted critics. Those that loved the film praised its pacing, suspense and jump scares while those who disliked it questioned its approach to collective terror in the wake if the 9/11 terrorist attacks. That last issue may be part of the reason Signs has seemed to age well — when its allowed to be considered outside of that context, it feels more authentic.
As for its take on the aliens themselves, Signs is far from the scariest. However, it does what other space horrors fail to do in making the danger feel close to home — like it could happen to you just as you leave the theater. The logical part of my mind knows I’d have a better chance against the creatures from Signs than I would against that thing from Alien: Romulus, yet the emotional response comes from seeing the alien in an earthly home rather than a distant space station.
Some viewers complain that the ending of Signs is abrupt and contrived. Without spoiling anything, I can say I hope the headlines about drone sightings and military UAP disclosures turn out to have simple endings as well. At the time of this writing, Signs is not available on any subscription-based streamers, but it is on PVOD stores as well as physical media.
