I have mixed feelings about writer/director M. Night Shyamalan’s first two films. I liked what he tried to do in The Sixth Sense, but the first time the kid said "I see dead people," I guessed the twist and the rest of the film simply played out to confirm my suspicions. On the other hand, I didn’t guess Unbreakable’s twist -- but that didn’t matter because I found it too boring and too ridiculous by the end to care about it anyway. With Signs, though, he seems to have merged the best aspects of his first two films and has shown himself to be quite capable of taking a story that would be B-movie material in anyone else’s hands and crafting it into an impressive thriller.

Mel Gibson plays Father Graham Hess, a well-meaning man who lost his wife in a freak accident and, as a result, has lost his faith in God too. His brother Merrill (Joaquin Phoenix) has moved home to help him cope with the tragedy and care for his two children. The family gets rattled further when strange things start happening around them.

Consistent in all of Shyamalan’s films is a slow, steady buildup of clues that lay the groundwork for a big, bring-it-all-together payoff in the end. In this case, the main clues are large crop circles that appear on the Hess family farmland. At first they’re simply assumed to be hoaxes, but as more strange things happen they realize that it’s only the tip of the iceberg for what will come next.

What I admired most about Shyamalan’s direction is how little he shows and how well this story builds to its climax. When we learn that what’s happening at the Hess household is happening elsewhere too, we’re not shown those other occurrences directly. Instead, Shyamalan shows us the Hess family watching the events unfold on TV, and then he mainly places the camera off to the side and focuses on them more than on the screen. When we first encounter a -- err, well, I won’t say for fear of giving too much away -- we don’t see what it is directly. Instead, we see it first as part of a homemade video shown on TV and then, when we see another, it’s as a reflection on the TV screen. No doubt, in most big-name directors' hands this would have become a digital-effects spectacle complete with an over-the-top, show-it-all-to-‘em ending. Instead, Shyamalan delivers far more by showing us much less.

I went into this film with a lot of skepticism and came out with plenty of admiration. Similar in style, tone, and delivery to his first two films, Signs is a first-rate thriller with a payoff that I never thought he’d be able to deliver like he has. This is one of the best movies this year and it gets a **** rating.

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