Most people like action, and just about every movie in the whole world involves a high amount of it. The only genre that comes to mind as an exception would be romance. Imagine this for a movie plot; aliens are going to invade Earth. The main character is a middle-aged man who lost his Christian beliefs because of the tragic and brutal loss of his wife. He lives in a nice house with his two children and former-baseball-slugger brother. The aliens arrive at said main character’s house, they pose a threat to his family’s life and he knows he can kill them, just like any other human being. What would you expect him to do? I would expect the main character and his brother to start shooting, stabbing, and beating these two aliens nonstop for half an hour. This, however, does not happen in this movie.
The whole family ends up turning their house into a wooden bunker and standing, idly in a hall, as two aliens bang their way in. Eventually they run down to the basement and trap themselves inside. While this was happening, I expected the former reverend to lose himself and pull a sawed-off shotgun out from behind a jar of pickles and start blasting off alien heads. This, however, does not happen in this movie. Instead they find a pickaxe. The moment the camera panned onto the pickaxe, I once again expected alien heads to be breaking open, but instead of with a shotgun, former action movie star Mel Gibson would be slamming face with a pickaxe. This, however, does not happen in this movie. They used it to hold shut the basement door.
Besides the great action potential this movie had, there was one gigantic error in Shyamalan’s logic. The aliens’ weakness was water. Upon contact, water immediately burned through their skin like a strong acid. Why in the universe would aliens even think about landing on a world where 70% of its resources are water? Not only was the most dangerous thing ever the most abundant resource, but it filled the atmosphere. Clouds are made of water vapor, rain is water, and the air is full of humidity. Water is ubiquitous. The aliens did not even have protective suits of any sort. They were naked. The moment they left their spacecraft, they should have died from the humidity in the air surrounding them. Instead, the bad writing just turned the movie into an idiot-fest.
Along with my dislike for the lack of action and the insane weakness of water, comes the idiocy of the aliens. They seem to be able to run faster than a former athlete and they can jump a dozen or more feet into the air. They also have high intelligence and excellent problem solving skills. However, these aliens cannot devise a way to escape from a pantry. The only thing blocking the route to freedom was a wooden door and a cabinet. Here is an idea, it may be crude, but I think it could work. First, the alien could have taken its extremely strong legs and shattered the door itself or the area around its hinges. Second, the alien would have just had to push the remains of the door and cabinet, or just the cabinet, out of the way. Cavemen could have figured out that puzzle, and they did not have the brain capacity to travel at the speed of light.
I proclaim the movie Signs as an idiot-fest. People who cannot think outside the box will think this movie is great, while the rest will know its horribly written and boring. Do not see this movie. Besides that, I pretty much just spoiled it for you.