Hacker Cinema
Signs
2002 · Film · 106 min
Directed by M. Night Shyamalan
A family living on a farm finds mysterious crop circles in their fields which suggests something more frightening to come.
2 positive1 negative1 mixed4 neutralfrom 8 commenters
Where to watch
No streaming data for this title.
9 comments on Hacker News
I wonder if there's a critical failure mode / safety feature of our species for some percentage of the population to always dislike whatever some other large percentage of the population likes.
As if it's to prevent the species from over-indexing on a particular set of behaviors.
Like how divisive films such as "Signs", "Cloud Atlas", and even "The Last Jedi" are loved by some and utterly reviled by others.
While that's kind of a silly case, maybe it's not just some random statistical fluke, but actually a function of the species at a population level to keep us from over-indexing and suboptimizing in some local minima or exploring some dangerous slope, etc.
I have a famous person anecdote I enjoy telling.
More than 20 years ago now, my brother (who was maybe 9) had his friend over for lunch and the night before my brother had spent the night at his house.
So my mother asks what they got up to, and the friend says they were playing water pistol fights with his sister’s boyfriend, “Wa-kin”, who was visiting.
We then ask what the boyfriend does, and he responds that he’s an actor. (Just be aware now that we live in Johannesburg, South Africa.)
So we say, cool, has he acted in anything we might know?
And friend says something like “Oh, lots of movies, Gladiator, Signs, others…”.
At which point I remember thinking, “no way!” and “so that’s how Joaquin is pronounced” (as I’d only ever seen it written).
Turns out the friend’s sister was a model living in New York which explained the situation I would never have guessed.
Yep. Signs was the movie that revealed to me my irrational fear of aliens walking in the distance for uncertain purpose.
Not joking, I am a big strong man but I was holding onto my girlfriend and shaking like a leaf during that movie.
Then the water scene happens and ruined the whole movie for me.
But I still get hairs standing up on the back of my neck if I think too long and hard about 7' tall aliens walking sideways in the distance. (Actually getting creeped out just typing this out).
I love it that there is a thought that can disturb me. I don't know where it comes from and I can't exactly control it.
Anyway, same thing with the Village. Great mood. Great cinematography. Great acting. Supernatural horror ominous period piece. So much well crafted build up that ended with an unfunny rehash of the ending of Monty Python's Holy Grail. Total cop out to the rest of the story. Unforgivable.
Signs is the worst movie I’ve ever seen. The plot makes no sense and it’s not like it has good character development or dialogue so that leaves nothing.
"Signs" was one of my favorite films of the 2000s, if you don't nitpick about the water. Suspenseful, well acted, leaves you guessing, eager for more.
Suffice to say, I eagerly anticipated "The Village" from the moment the first trailer dropped. The costumes looked cool. The colors, the creatures, the mood and the mystery.
I don't think I've ever left a theater quite so disappointed. The twist ruined what had been a magical experience for the better half of the film. I wanted the magic to endure, but I got slapped with a bad episode of "The Outer Limits".
Shyamalan remains a fantastic filmmaker for his hits, but this one hurt me. I don't wait for films anymore.
And yet there are people out there who will still try and argue that Signs is not a brilliant film
Unlikely; as demonstrated in the documentary movie Signs, they don't really like water. Perhaps it's a defense system.
I'll take that over this comment:
"The other possible explanation is that it was not chance. The movie 'Signs' makes a good discussion of this point."
I went back and watched this and found it highly interesting.
The technology has advanced from mostly bittorrent instead of gnutella based networks.
The film industry is producing arguably better blockbusters (The Dark Knight vs Signs?) and are making more money than before with this year being one of the biggest years on record, even during a recession.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-boxoffice2-2009feb02,0,7465333.story
Mediadefender are now involved in a case where they DOS'd legitimate servers.