It’s been 24 years since one of the most poignant movies we’ve ever seen was released.
Signs, with Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix.
Over the past 24 years, I can’t even describe how many times I’ve watched this movie. To the point where, probably 23 years ago, my VHS copy was basically ruined from overuse. Somewhere in this house there’s a DVD that probably has plenty of dust on it now, but also plenty of scratches from the number of times it was put into a DVD player.
We’ve hunted down any place streaming it for free. We’ve rented it probably way too many times from various streaming services.
The movie was something in 2002.. it had significance and a message and touched on a connection between people…
We are not a stranger to the critique that the graphics at the end are goofy.. the CGI alien imagery hasn’t exactly aged gracefully. We know people laugh at the water falling onto the alien’s shoulder. The movie has been mocked, parodied and satirized plenty of times since 2002.
But in 2002, Signs was the Horror Report Movie of the Year.
Here is a snippet of we immaturely said that year:
You had to be there.
You have to remember the context in which Signs arrived. M. Night Shyamalan had already given us The Sixth Sense, one of the greatest box-office sleeper stories of its time and a movie that completely changed the conversation around him.
The entire country was talking about The Sixth Sense.
And here’s something else that’s almost quaint to remember now: people actually tried not to ruin the ending. People enthusiastically wanted their friends and family to experience that ending in a theater the same way they did. Unless you went searching around the internet for somebody willing to spoil it, we somehow managed to remain relatively spoiler-free.
Shyamalan followed The Sixth Sense with Unbreakable and then, in 2002, came Signs.
And he used some of that same magic again. Except the ending of Signs wasn’t really about delivering another giant twist. It was something more meaningful.
Yes, Signs is technically about an alien invasion of planet Earth and one small family’s fight inside a farmhouse outside Philadelphia to survive it.
There are frightening images. There are jump scares. There’s an alien walking past a birthday party that probably scared the living hell out of plenty of people sitting in theaters in 2002.
But if you’re watching Signs today simply for the jump scares or the alien effects, you’re probably going to be disappointed.
Because that’s not really what the movie is about.
It’s about a minister who loses his faith after his wife dies through what seems like the cruelest possible act of random fate.
It’s about Joaquin Phoenix’s Merrill Hess, a man who once seemed destined for something greater but never quite got there. He had talent. He had promise. He had baseball. And now he’s working at a gas station and living with his brother.
It’s about two children traumatized by the death of their mother, trying to understand their own grief while simultaneously watching their father transform into a different, almost unrecognizable version of himself. And in the middle of all of this, aliens invade Earth.
The alien invasion is the metaphorical backdrop for everything else happening inside that farmhouse.
Coincidences that might not be coincidences and faith lost and eventually rediscovered. Trauma, with grief and regret, all get incorporated..
The question of whether the terrible and seemingly random things that happen to us have some meaning that we simply can’t see while we’re living through them.
And how you keep the light on when the world around you suddenly seems filled with shadows.
There’s another piece of the history that shouldn’t be forgotten.
Signs was made in the shadow of September 11, 2001.
The movie was being made during that period, and the bonus documentary material released with the film even captured members of the production discussing what it was like when 9/11 happened. As a matter of fact, filming started on September 12, 2001..
It’s difficult to explain to someone who wasn’t old enough to experience that period just how much 9/11 permeated almost everything afterward.
Movies. Television. Music. News. Conversations. Families. Fear.
The country had suddenly experienced the horrifying realization that something almost unimaginable could happen on an otherwise normal morning.
And then Signs came along with a family standing inside a farmhouse, watching television and listening to the radio as something unimaginable happened to the entire world outside.
I don’t think you can completely separate those things.
Maybe that’s one reason the movie hit so differently in 2002.
And now 24 years have passed.
We recently went back and watched Signs again. It’s currently streaming on Apple TV—which we’ll call “free” with the obvious asterisk that you have to pay for Apple TV to get that particular version of free.
And boy, does 2002 look like 2002.
There are VHS tapes and VCRs. Old baby monitors become an important piece of technology. There aren’t smartphones constantly buzzing with notifications. Nobody is refreshing social media looking for the newest shaky alien video.
Instead, our protagonists watch television and listen to the radio to find out whether the world is ending.
Of course things would be different today.
But strangely enough, the important things wouldn’t be.
Because Signs is grounded in something that technology hasn’t really changed.
It’s not simply a horror movie.
It’s a deeply profound story about a spiritual awakening during a horrific moment.
Kind of like 9/11.
And kind of like life itself for a lot of people.
Over the past 24 years, I’ve told countless people to watch Signs. I don’t know how many actually listened. I don’t know how many watched it and thought I was crazy for loving it so much.
That’s okay.
I’ve also remained loyal to Shyamalan through some of the years when seemingly everybody else decided they were done with him.
We’ve even told countless people to watch Lady in the Water, another movie people dismiss because they think the premise is goofy or the story is strange.
But Lady in the Water tells you what it is. It’s a bedtime story.
And underneath that strange bedtime story is another profoundly human idea about trauma—how it changes a person, how it can change the soul and how accepting what happened to you can become part of reclaiming your identity.
Maybe that’s why these movies have stuck with me.
Because Signs, to some degree, healed me in 2002.
And for the past 24 years, I’ve gone back to it during moments when I needed some spiritual healing or maybe just an awakening.
I know.
It’s just a movie.
But after watching it this many times over this many years, there’s still something nagging at my mind.
If an alien invasion ever really happened, maybe the aliens really would be stupid enough to invade a planet covered in the one substance capable of killing them.
Maybe water really would do it.
Who knows.
But something else seems far more believable.
If an alien invasion happened today, there would be families inside farmhouses, apartments and homes across the world going through exactly the same struggle as the Hess family.
Because right now there are already plenty of people fighting profoundly deep battles trying to figure out who they are, what they believe and how to put themselves back together after something changed them.
Twenty-four years of technological advancement hasn’t changed that.
Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix’s characters didn’t have smartphones, social media or most of our modern conveniences.
But they had exactly the same emotions we have today.
Trauma and heartbreak.
Fear and hopelessness.
Resilience and courage.
And the desperate search for some kind of meaning in the face of an earth-shattering crisis.
That’s what Signs is.
So watch it again.
Don’t worry about whether the CGI alien looks convincing in 2026.
Look at the people inside the farmhouse instead. And maybe see if you can reclaim a little bit of the spirit you had when you first watched it all those years ago.
And if you’re watching Signs for the first time?
This is what we said about the movie during our “movie of the year post” 24 short years ago, without grammar corrected 🙂 :
Priests are scandalous all around us. Elders are corrupting minors. Television ads are selling sex to children. Government is selling our secrecy for safety and we let them. Politicians who lie and cheat and steal to get their positions of power are corrupting institutions of power we once respected because our founding father gave us a reason to. We have no heroes anymore, we, often times and in many individual cases, have nothing to have faith in. SIGNS illustrates to us that faith has faith in us to make the right choice, to see the signs. A glass of water is half full. In this film it matters.
Everything matters. It’s the ultimate message for life Shaymalan wanted to send. It’s also the ultimate reason I chose this film as the movie of the year. It gave me a glimmer of hope. It made me wonder. It made me think about things in a different way. It filled me with spirit, I left the film each time feeling more faithful and spiritual than any church service on earth can make me. I saw the SIGNS. I just hope I never close my eyes again.
HORROR-REPORT’S FILM OF THE YEAR 2002: SIGNS
Don’t watch it as a 24-year-old alien movie whose special effects you’re supposed to judge against what Hollywood can create today.
Watch it as a story about people trying to survive something they don’t understand.
Maybe, somewhere in their struggle, you’ll recognize a little bit of your own.
And maybe you’ll find one of the signs you’ve been looking for.
