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M. Night Shyamalan's Signs was considered one of his biggest successes for a long time. After the groundbreaking releases of The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, every studio in Hollywood wanted a crack at M. Night Shyamalan's next script. Though after 2 decades of examination, the ending of Signs has not held up as many fans remember. Known for his big twist endings, M. Night Shyamalan seemed to have his first misstep with Signs, but no one noticed at the time.
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This is the moment that ruined Signs
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When writer-director M. Night Shyamalan unleashed the film into the world in 2002
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audiences had no idea what to expect, literally. The filmmaker had made a name for himself by delivering powerful twists
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In that respect, Signs was no different, which is exactly the problem
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The Sixth Sense was a Hollywood sensation before it was ever committed to film
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I see dead people. Despite M. Night Shyamalan having very few credentials to his name, the script caused an uproar among several studios
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with Disney ultimately winning out over Columbia Pictures, DreamWorks, and New Line Cinema
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They bought the script for around $3 million, made the movie for $40, and then raked in $673 million at the box office in 1999
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A year later, Shyamalan repeated his success, albeit to a lesser extent, with Unbreakable, making Disney $248 million worldwide
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While those numbers would have been enough to put Shyamalan on the map, his success wasn't just fiscal
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As both writer and director, M. Night's creative vision was stylistically distinct and a refreshing change of pace for the Hollywood landscape of the late 90s and early 2000s
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His ability to stir latent fear and inspire wonder had droves of fans flocking to theaters
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But it was the mind-bending twists that truly captured the interest of moviegoers
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We came to know Shyamalan as a filmmaker who explored broader thematic concepts under the guise of a fairly straightforward plot
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with a sudden and satisfying twist ending. So with two hugely successful projects under his belt, Disney was happy to greenlight his third project
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That third project turned out to be Signs. Signs was a massive financial success on release, and critics were enamored with the mystery, intensity, and message
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Shyamalan was touted as a born filmmaker and compared to Alfred Hitchcock and Steven Spielberg
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And yet, despite the heaping praise, not everyone was on board. There were a few main points of contention among critics and general moviegoers
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The first is that none of these characters behave like real people Though let be honest none of Shyamalan characters ever do What No The stilted pacing of conversations dry humor and bizarre dialogue are all expected facets
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of a Shyamalan film, and that's as true today as it was in 2002. Intentional or not
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the unreal quality of these people and their situation adds to the sense of wrongness and
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unease in Shyamalan's world. Though, the bigger and more important issue with Signs is its ending
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And if you never watched the movie, we recommend you click off now, because there will be some major spoilers ahead
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Signs follows ex-rev. Graham Hess, played by Mel Gibson, as he and the rest of the world endure a terrifying alien attack
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Having recently lost his wife and subsequently his faith, Graham spends most of the movie asking people not to call him father anymore
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Caroline? Please stop calling me father. He lives with his two children, as well as his younger brother, Joaquin Phoenix's Meryl
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Over the course of the film, we learn a few things about Graham's family members
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The first is that his son Morgan, played by Rory Culkin, is asthmatic. The second is that his daughter, Bo, played by Abigail Breslin
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is very particular about her water and leaves half-finished glasses all over the house
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And the third is that Meryl used to be a prolific minor league baseball player
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You've got two minor league home run records, don't you? Five. In fact, that's basically all we learn about his family
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We never get a deeper sense of who any of these people are. Eventually, the family finds themselves trapped in the basement by alien invaders
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They reemerge 12 hours later, having learned via a radio report that
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for some unknown reason, the aliens have fled Earth. Except one. The straggler is standing in their living room
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holding Morgan's limp body and attempting to poison him. This is when we get an important flashback scene
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transporting us to the night Graham's wife died. Her final words were to tell Meryl to..
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Which meant nothing in the moment, but now that Meryl is standing in front of his commemorative baseball bat
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and facing down an alien, he takes them to heart. Luckily for him, the alien just sort of stands around waiting to be hit
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Then it gets knocked into one of Bo's old glasses of water. It's revealed that water is toxic to it
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After a glass pours directly onto its head the alien finally dies Graham gives Morgan an epinephrine shot and he survives though Graham attributes it to the fact that Morgan lungs had seized so he couldn inhale the alien poison
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After a time jump, we see Graham come out of the bathroom dressed in his clergy outfit
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He walks out of frame, and we fade to black. So let's address the alien in the room here
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A highly advanced species landed on a planet that was 70% poison
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sent a handful of scouts down to terrorize the locals, and then escaped into the night, never to be seen again
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There's an added layer of frustration here because the rest of the movie does an excellent job of building up the tension around the aliens
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We see their crop circles, hear them speak, see their silhouette, and catch glimpses of them with practical effects before seeing a grainy Bigfoot-style home video of their full body
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The end squanders all of the work M. Night put into making these things so terrifying, rendering them nothing but big, dumb animals
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The idea that aliens could be intelligent enough to develop interstellar travel, yet couldn't be bothered to check if Earth was safe for them is laughable
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And seeing their CGI bodies in broad daylight with a total lack of self-preservation removes the last shred of threat that they may have posed
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There have been many arguments through the years defending and interpreting the end of Signs
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And while Shyamalan hasn't confirmed any of them, he has told us what the movie is really about
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In an interview with The Ringer in 2020, Shyamalan said, The sofa scene in Signs is what the movie is actually about, where he and his brother talk
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about what kind of person are you, do you believe in things, or is it all just chance
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That sofa scene he's talking about shows up about halfway through the movie's runtime
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It features Graham and Merrill sitting together in their living room. After seeing reports of aliens all over the world, Merrill wonders if this is the beginning
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of the end and hopes for a life-saving miracle. His brother, on the other hand, believes the world is chaos and there will be no miracle
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that comes to save them. Of course, Graham is the hero of this story. Anyone who understands the basics of a hero's journey knows that the film is telling us that
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Graham is wrong in this scene, and he'll undergo a change that will reestablish his faith
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And that's exactly what happens when the aliens attack. With that in mind the twist ending in Signs isn that the aliens are weak to water That fact is actually telegraphed to us earlier in the movie with one of Shyamalan trademark gratuitous cameos I don think they like water The real twist is
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that everything happens for a reason, and Graham just needed to believe. Morgan had asthma because
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he needed to survive the attempted poisoning. Bo had to be picky about her water so they could use
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her extra glasses as ammunition. Meryl had to be a minor league baseball player who never went pro
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so he could be home with his family and beat down the alien more professionally
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and Graham's wife had to die to deliver a prophetic message. Unsatisfying doesn't even begin to cover how bad this so-called twist is
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It really shines a light on Shyamalan's worst tendencies as a writer and director
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With his previous two films, the third act reveals helped wrap up the story
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and added interesting context. Once you know Dr. Crow's fate, the events of The Sixth Sense are even more fun to watch unfold
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Knowing the true nature of Elijah Price's character in Unbreakable puts his relationship with David Dunn in a new light
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Obviously, Shyamalan wanted to pull off another mind-blowing reveal with Signs. He wanted to do it in a way that touched on a deeper theme of faith and belief
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and he was willing to sacrifice basic logic, character development, and the fear of his antagonists to do it
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Knowing the end of Signs does nothing for its audience. If anything, on a rewatch, you'll only notice how blatantly and clumsily
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the tracks have been laid to reach the intended destination. There was never any mystery or subtlety
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Whether we knew it at the time or not, this movie spelled disaster for Shyamalan
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After Signs, the mystique of Shyamalan's filmmaking started to wear off. He put out a string of bad movies punctuated by one or two that were worth watching
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before trying to create his own cinematic universe with 2019's Glass. Since then, Shyamalan has been churning out movies with the same tired tropes
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His characters still speak like robots. The four of us are here to prevent the apocalypse
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He still makes unnecessary cameos, and every movie ends with a perfunctory twist
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It no longer feels unique and fresh like it did in the early 2000s
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And at this point, the best twist we can hope for is that Shyamalan finally switches up his formula
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before he fades out of relevance entirely