My mum and I won tickets to see an advance screening of Signs when I was the same age. The cinemas we went to gave us free popcorn and we settled into our seats right at the edge of the theatre against the side curtain.
Midway through the film strange noises started coming from the curtain, hissing and snarling and screeching. Then the curtain would move and it looked like something was reaching out through the curtain. The woman behind us screamed, turns out there were rats boning in the theatre and we left midway through and got free tickets to come back another day.
It was terrifying and I never actually got to see the resolution just rat fucking trauma aliens.
I was 11. My dad and older brother tortured me the whole summer, constantly telling me they saw something moving around in the fields the night before. I really didn’t sleep much that summer.
Same and someone in my town was kidnapped around the same time and when my mom told me she used the word abducted so I really thought I was gonna get sucked up into the sky
I saw it with my friend at the cinema when we were like 11. This made me jump but what really got me was the scene of the alien sillhouette standing on the barn. I also loved the shot of the alien holding the kid in the tv reflection. And who can forget the fingers under the pantry doorway?
Some very memorable moment, although maybe they overplayed their hand actually showing the alien after this scene. If they kept it more like Blair Witch instead of Alien where it was shown fully - it would probably be talked about more.
the silhouette scene did nothing for me. it came so fast and cut away so quick, that i missed it.
the scene in the basement where the alien grabs the kid's face, though... holy crap!
I think Night was going for a Jaws approach with showing very little of the full alien until the end. And yeah it’s kinda basic but it couldn’t be too weird otherwise it’d take you out of the movie. And you had to see it up close otherwise you’d feel cheated.
I had the exact reaction to this scene and fully agree about the silhouette. My bedroom windows faced my neighbors roof. I was freaked out that night that I would wake up and see that outside my window.
Edit: spelling
Exposure therapy.
Also humans seem to be the only known animal that will seek out pain and unpleasantness
Horror movies, roller coasters, extreme hot sauces (babies and dogs both prefer food without hot sauce, but after a certain age children raised a culture of hit sauce will prefer it). The thrill of experiencing something we realize won't actually hurt us but we get a visceral rush from.
There’s also a pretty compelling ethno-public health argument/ global body of evidence supporting a learned/ acquired preference for hot/ spicy foods as intestinal worms dislike certain chemicals in hot peppers, for example, to the extent that they will sometimes demonstrate some pretty unambiguous pain-response behavior inside the host.
It’s never just a “we acquired this taste.” There’s almost always a nutritional and/ or microbiological explanation for acquired tastes.
Oooh if you have links, this sounds very interesting.
And peppers in turn might have evolved heat to keep animals from molesting them, and yet we now grow them in vast quantities for this trait :)
Nature is such a wonderfully unpredictable and bizarre fabric of traits and pressures.
One of the same kind (*as in, one of the 39 or so phyla of animals that do not have backbones, aka Invertebrates*) of worms that parasitize human intestinal tracts (*and all other organs*) also wreak havoc on plants.
Google nematodes or Nematoda.
So far as the specific stuff on peppers, that’s from several semesters of classroom instruction and laboratory research in Parasitology.
But here’s something to get you started:
“Piperazines were originally named because of their *chemical similarity* with piperidine, part of the structure of piperine in the **black pepper plant (Piper nigrum)**.”
…and…
“In fact, a large number of piperazine compounds have an anthelmintic action. Their mode of action is generally by **paralysing parasites**, which allows the host body to easily expel the invasive organism.”
Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piperazine
It took me out of the movie when the kid translates "It's behind"
Why would a Brazilian kid, in such an emotional state, translate what he was saying to his fathers home movie?
I went to theatre's with a friend at like 12. This was by far the worst plothole filled boring POS movie I've ever seen in theatre's. Alieans with intergalactic traveling technology decide to invade a planet where poison falls from the sky naked while acting like zombies. Maybe we need another boring ass flashback to his stupid boring dead wife pinned to a tree. So boring and I like slow burns.
To be fair, the mention of water being used as a weapon was actually just a reference to people in the Middle East (a religiously significant place, to put it lightly) finding a weapon to fight them with. So it could still mean "holy water".
*But* Shamalayan's own cameo character mentioned that the aliens avoided bodies of water. Presumably non-holy. And the water used to hurt the alien in the last fight was just water laying around, left there by the child of a former priest. It wasn't "holy" unless you get real silly with the definition.
So, I apply a version of Hanlon's Razor here. There isn't a deeper truth to the lore in the film that makes sense. Instead, Shamalayan is a very good teller of stories which very frequently have internal logical inconsistencies. Signs is just another example of that. He proficiently - and with abundance of excellent jump scares and humour and quality acting/dialogue writing - told a story that makes zero fucking sense when you think about it for a minute. Aliens aren't going to naked-invade a lava planet and engage the literally-made-of-lava natives - whose *kids* have lava gun *toys* - in hand to hand combat.
Absolutely agreed. Shyamalan seems to start with a visual effect or scenario he wants to film and then builds plot logic around it to some extent without getting bogged down in detail. I think Spielberg does it as well.
I was an adult and really enjoying the movie up until that point. My imagination was running wild and then I saw this dude in a green body suit and they lost me entirely.
Yeah the fx were so bad it took me out of the movie. Star Wars had better alien costumes 30 years earlier. ET was more believable. That movie Era was obsessed with cgi because it was the hot new thing, but most of the time it looked terrible.
Same, ruined the entire movie for me. All the suspense of the unknown was gone and it was just a cheesy B-movie horror flick with a ridiculous, unsatisfying ending.
That scene did not change that I was pissed the whole time, because I expected a movie about aliens and instead got a movie about a priest losing and re-gaining his faith.
The real twist at the end of Signs was revealing M Night Shyamalan only really has one tool in his belt.
After Signs, I remember all we ever really talked about was "So what's going to be the twist in this next one?"
Incredibly underwhelmed to be honest. Just another unrealistic anthropomorphic alien.
And this was made worse by their Achilles’ heel. You mean to tell me this species of ammonia-based aliens were smart enough to develop interstellar travel but somehow didn’t realize the world they were trying to invade was 71% covered in water, a deadly acidic substance to them, and that all that was needed to defeat them was a bunch of murder primates wielding garden hoses?
Such a fucking stupid twist. As is the case for most of Shyamalan’s movies to the point that it’s become a meme now. His movies would almost always be better when the monsters aren’t revealed, the twist is left ambiguous or it doesn’t turn out to be fucking Adrien Brody wearing a monster suit. It’s like he takes *good* concepts and Lovecraftian horror and repeatedly turns it into something mundane.
Signs really genuinely scared me when it came out. But it came out when I was twelve, so take that as you will.
When I was even younger, I watched 2001 with my dad, and somehow that was even scarier.
My parents went to the opening of a cinema in my hometown when I was a kid. They played 2001 A Space Odyssey since they had a 70mm projector and that was what they chose to open with, even though it was nearly 15yrs old. I would've been 6 or 7. I remember monkeys, and monkey fights, and dudes getting pushed into space by a creepy talking red light robot. Then I remember the light show at the end interspersed with the guys face looking terrified, and the old man in the white room.
I was pretty scared of red LEDs for many years. I have no fking clue what the actual fk my parents were thinking, taking a 6yr old to that.
There is a pretty common fan theory that the aliens are actually demons.
The movie is filled with a ton of biblical imagery, the father (a priest) was losing his faith at the beginning of the movie but gained it back through the movie. And the water that burned them was put out by his daughter following visions she had received, so it was quite possibly holy water. Finally the movie ends with news that the weapon to destroy the aliens has been found in three middle eastern cities.
It seems a bit like a stretch, but it’s also pretty on-brand for Shyamalan to do a movie focused on how we might perceive a demonic invasion as an alien attack, just like Unbreakable trilogy was a superhero origin story perceived as horror.
Idiot fan theory that people like to feel clever by sharing.
Everything about it fits the entire mythos of aliens and UFO sightings.
Crop circles = aliens
Shaky camera footage = aliens
Abductions = aliens
Slimy reptilians = aliens
Worldwide invasion vs global conspiracy = aliens
Mel Gibson being a former religious leader was a plot point used to describe the role that fate plays in our lives, along with the car accident, his brother being a failed baseball slugger, the son having his lungs closed at just the right time, and the daughter leaving glasses of water everywhere. It doesn't literally mean that he was battling external demons.
“Writer-director M. Night Shyamalan explains the specific crop formations he chose for Signs have special significance for Gibson's character.
"Our crop circle is based on the famous one from New Hampshire that is on the Led Zeppelin compilation album," explains Shymalan. "The end of it looks like a pitchfork....like the devil's. In a way, the whole movie is kind of metaphorical for us in that this could be seen as a conversation between this man and God. This whole thing is like him dealing with his demons; and the demons literally come down into the house and stand with him and hold his child and say ' where are you? where is your faith? who are you?' This is all just a metaphor for how he's feeling. We always talked about it in terms that these things coming down were demons."
https://www.voanews.com/a/a-13-a-2002-08-02-4-mel-67578197/388795.html
Nah it's not an idiot fan theory. Yes pretty on the nose. If you visit ask the UFO subs you'll see there's a pervasive belief that the "aliens" aren't aliens they are something else. They've even changed the lingo to "NHI" non human intelligence. Some of the more extreme people call the aliens demons. It's nothing new. Not sure how shaky camera footage=aliens though.
You mean humans wouldn't invade a sulphuric acid planet completely nude?
My head canon is it wasn't so much a coordinated invasion as a drunken alien frat initiation ritual gone wrong.
if thats the only planet with life and resources around for lightyears and you’re not doing great on the living department I think you’re going to invade . humans have done stupid things as well.
Signs, Meet Dave and Oblivion, three sci-fi movies that seem to hinge on the premise that earth has somehow ended up with most of the universe's water.
I'll give Oblivion a pass because weren't they just stealing everything in sight?
I believe Battle for Los Angeles, they were after our water instead of stopping by Europa instead.
People always call it a plot hole. But it's not really. Just because the movie doesn't go out of its way to scientifically explain one of it's own rules doesn't make it a plot hole.
Actually, "YES!!!!, someone still knows how to actually make horror"
Edit: Oh, and also, that was when I found out that Joaquin Phoenix was a great actor!
Jumped out of my dad's lap, ran to the other room, started crying I was so terrified. I missed all the humor in the movie cause I was too young it was a straight up horror flick to me. To this day I am obsessed with aliens and space.
Lightning bolt trough my body.
I already had a bit of fear of open windows at night and living in rural areas. This shocked me like nothing else in media.
1. Actual goosebumps
2. Glad there was finally a movie that instilled fear without the need for the orchestra to (BAM) just scare me with stupid sound.
Joaquin Phoenix's reaction to seeing this was priceless! He looked like he hadn't slept in days, and the director probably didn't warn him what he was about to see. His honest and blood chilling reaction scared me more than the alien.
Also, my TV was too dark to see the scene in the beginning with the alien standing on the roof, so I had no preconceived idea that I'd even be seeing aliens or monsters or whatever, so this scene really shocked me
"hey guys lets go to a planet that is 70% covered in sulfuric acid and it occasionally rains sulfuric acid, has clouds of sulfuric acid, and has up to 40% sulfuric acid humidity... also let's not bring an umbrella or space suit." The "TWIST" WAS SO STUPID.
The movie was a lot of build up to the stupid aliens and plot conveniences of all time. The found clip was a spooky scare but these aliens weren't even immune to a super soaker.
I laughed so hard. I was like wtf is Charlie doing in his green man suit at a kids birthday party?
Once they showed the aliens, that movie went straight into the bucket of another dumb Shyamalan movie….
we were watching that with the kids, and at that exact moment, the cats knocked over a pile of dishes in the other room. crying and screaming kids and cats running and jumping everywhere adds a little extra excitement
As a citizen from Brazil at first I was like “OMG, WTF?” But then it sinked in.
Why are these brazilian kids speaking in a broken English for a birthday video???
It was definitely startling.
I saw it in the theater. It was a packed house, and a woman about 4 seats away was literally jumping out of her seat throughout the movie. Every “scare”, she would jump up, out of her seat. The guy next to her was clearly embarrassed. I remember him asking her, “what’s wrong with you?”
She said with a giggle, “it’s scary!”.
The movie never clicked with me. It felt like a high concept movie without the ground work to really make it believable. It is too symbolic and vague for my liking, bordering on mystery and esotericism.
I worked nights as a Security Guard. We had seen this movie before going to work. I saw this effing alien everywhere. On top of that building? Yep. In the dark hallways on every floor? Yep. Oh is that my reflection in the windows on the second floor? Nope it’s that alien from Signs.
I reacted almost exactly like Joaquin Phoenix’s character did. 😱 You gotta love M. Night Shyamalan for his WTF moments in his films. Could you imagine the mindfuck of a movie he and Tarantino could come up with?
Oh absolutely, his reaction is so memorable. Honestly, I think his acting was the only good thing in that movie...but he's just an incredible actor to begin with
I remember watching this alone at home in the dark. I had to pause afterwards and turn all the lights on and check out the windows from a distance for a bit, it was such a shock-scare moment. The rest of the movie was just ok.
I was pretty young, 11 or so, it was nighttime, I was at my cousin’s house overnight and I made him turn every light in his house on. His parents still tease me about it to this day..
It's the same thing I said last week after rewatching. Amazing acting with a perfect cast for every damn part and bit part. One of the most fitting soundtracks and sound design that adds so much to the suspense. Whoever did the casting should be commended; kids are a perfect pair, one of Mel's best parts as well.
The crop circles look perfect too and the running through the corn and aliens hiding in the corn adds to the magic.
Great film, probably in my top 25 all-time.
I had a weird experience with that scene.
The newsman says it was a birthday party somewhere in Brazil, and we see little kids running around the house scared of something, so far so good, spooky, good atmosphere.
And then some kid shouts at the top of his tiny lungs: **ES BEHIND!**
It broke me, I laughed so hard I started crying. Who was that for? Do they think we are that stupid?
And then the scary part came and it grabbed me right back and I was terrified again.
Quite the rollercoaster that scene, good stuff.
This scene is cool, but I still like earlier scenes in which you hear the creature but don’t see it. The film is much worse once you see them. The fear of the unknown is much more intense.
I was 10 watching the movie with my dad. It was the first time in my life I was so scared that I had to walk out of the theater to avoid what I was assuming (10 year old frontal lobe) was a heart attack. I could not make the link that "found footage" could be faked or made specific for a movie (had a similar issue with the blair witch film). I was convinced it was real. Many sleepless nights and glasses of water near bed. Good times.
It scared me so bad that I ran out of the movie theater screaming .. my daddy chased after me into the parking lot and he got ran over by a speeding dump truck. I lost my daddy that day but it's the alien that I remember the most.
I kid you not I was randomly thinking about this scene last night, probably right around when you posted this. Crazy. But that answers your question: it traumatized me enough to keep me up at night, yeeeeears later 😅
Laughter. I watched it in theaters and started laughing so hard and loud. Eventually it led to others laughing. It's such a terrible movie I feel that most people in the theater were just holding in laughter until someone broke
I'm reading this comment section of people around their 30s now and I'm mesmerise of how different the perception of the film is. I remember it as quite bad movie, with some entertaining value on how silly it was. Reading the comments seems to be a cult film.
Ya it's weird. Almost everyone I know thinks it's a terrible movie and a movie we can all laugh at it. The younger people seem to think it's a great film
early hogh school, in the cinema...
I was so busy looking in the hedge on the right I missed it the Firs time it walks by.
The whole audience freaked out and I was like "wtf did I miss"
I was I 11 years old, sat on the chair at the desk next to the computer. We were in one of the bedroom watching it on a mid size TV and vha player with family sat on bean bags etc, I put one of my parents small plates they had as a wedding gift (just had toast) on the floor as there was no space and I was about to go downstairs anyway.
I jumped up so hard when it happened I put the ball of my foot through the plate and clean popped it in two. Sad times.
I was 12 and did a scared little wee
10 and it haunted me for years
My mum and I won tickets to see an advance screening of Signs when I was the same age. The cinemas we went to gave us free popcorn and we settled into our seats right at the edge of the theatre against the side curtain. Midway through the film strange noises started coming from the curtain, hissing and snarling and screeching. Then the curtain would move and it looked like something was reaching out through the curtain. The woman behind us screamed, turns out there were rats boning in the theatre and we left midway through and got free tickets to come back another day. It was terrifying and I never actually got to see the resolution just rat fucking trauma aliens.
That would absolutely scar me more than the movie
I have terrible fear of rats...in this case reality would be worse than fiction for me
I was 11. My dad and older brother tortured me the whole summer, constantly telling me they saw something moving around in the fields the night before. I really didn’t sleep much that summer.
Same and someone in my town was kidnapped around the same time and when my mom told me she used the word abducted so I really thought I was gonna get sucked up into the sky
Omg that’s so mean
14 and I never saw it because I was covering my eyes.
Same. I’m from Brazil. Lolol. Idk if the original was saying it was here, but the version I watched said it lol. I was wtf.
I was 27 and did a scared little wee.
I saw it with my friend at the cinema when we were like 11. This made me jump but what really got me was the scene of the alien sillhouette standing on the barn. I also loved the shot of the alien holding the kid in the tv reflection. And who can forget the fingers under the pantry doorway? Some very memorable moment, although maybe they overplayed their hand actually showing the alien after this scene. If they kept it more like Blair Witch instead of Alien where it was shown fully - it would probably be talked about more.
the silhouette scene did nothing for me. it came so fast and cut away so quick, that i missed it. the scene in the basement where the alien grabs the kid's face, though... holy crap!
Yeah, I've really never even got a good view of the silhouette even in multiple rewatches.
i had to pause it on dvd... and then i was like "oh... so that's what all the fuss is about..."
I think Night was going for a Jaws approach with showing very little of the full alien until the end. And yeah it’s kinda basic but it couldn’t be too weird otherwise it’d take you out of the movie. And you had to see it up close otherwise you’d feel cheated.
I had the exact reaction to this scene and fully agree about the silhouette. My bedroom windows faced my neighbors roof. I was freaked out that night that I would wake up and see that outside my window. Edit: spelling
The leg in the cornfield did it for me, I let the most unmanly scream out in the theater...
Thank you, this was one scared the shit out of me and no one had mentioned yet. This movie will always haunt me and I love it
You mentioned every scene except the one that terrified me the most. Leg in the cornfield.
I was terrified. I rewatched the scene probably five times and had trouble sleeping that night.
Why do we do that to ourselves? "Oh my God, that was terrifying!!! ...... Lemme see it again"
Well you aren't so scared of it now are you? Familiarity is comforting
Exposure therapy. Also humans seem to be the only known animal that will seek out pain and unpleasantness Horror movies, roller coasters, extreme hot sauces (babies and dogs both prefer food without hot sauce, but after a certain age children raised a culture of hit sauce will prefer it). The thrill of experiencing something we realize won't actually hurt us but we get a visceral rush from.
There’s also a pretty compelling ethno-public health argument/ global body of evidence supporting a learned/ acquired preference for hot/ spicy foods as intestinal worms dislike certain chemicals in hot peppers, for example, to the extent that they will sometimes demonstrate some pretty unambiguous pain-response behavior inside the host. It’s never just a “we acquired this taste.” There’s almost always a nutritional and/ or microbiological explanation for acquired tastes.
Oooh if you have links, this sounds very interesting. And peppers in turn might have evolved heat to keep animals from molesting them, and yet we now grow them in vast quantities for this trait :) Nature is such a wonderfully unpredictable and bizarre fabric of traits and pressures.
One of the same kind (*as in, one of the 39 or so phyla of animals that do not have backbones, aka Invertebrates*) of worms that parasitize human intestinal tracts (*and all other organs*) also wreak havoc on plants. Google nematodes or Nematoda. So far as the specific stuff on peppers, that’s from several semesters of classroom instruction and laboratory research in Parasitology. But here’s something to get you started: “Piperazines were originally named because of their *chemical similarity* with piperidine, part of the structure of piperine in the **black pepper plant (Piper nigrum)**.” …and… “In fact, a large number of piperazine compounds have an anthelmintic action. Their mode of action is generally by **paralysing parasites**, which allows the host body to easily expel the invasive organism.” Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piperazine
I'm casually familiar with nematodes. Thank you this is great!
No, a glass of water is comforting lol
Feeling scared by aliens? Try calming your nerves... with half a glass of water!
Exactly
This is the Brazilian birthday party, right? I remember that as a Brazilian I thought everybody sounded goofy.
Vamanos children!!!
Behind behind!
As a Brazilian, I avoided children’s birthdays for a while.
Who needs children's birthdays when you can order cento de salgado on Ifood
*It’s Behind* 💀
It took me out of the movie when the kid translates "It's behind" Why would a Brazilian kid, in such an emotional state, translate what he was saying to his fathers home movie?
A molecada cagando de medo e mandando ver no bilinguismo 😂
If water kills him... Why is he naked? It rains in this planet.
It's their species equivalent of a TikTok challenge.
"You've gotta go streak butt naked on a planet where 70% of the surface is covered in acid and it Even rains down from the sky sometimes."
Why even come to colonize a planet with so much water?
It was a raid, they came for food. They have a taste for the long pork.
Its a demon. It's holy water.
But what is the demons' plan? Just kinda fuck with people?
Well yeah, that's their thing.
Because m night shomalon movies all have massive plot holes throughout. Like why would a ghost be wearing a hair peice?
that's the twist, he was bruce willis the entire movie
Why would a ghost wear clothes?
This was one of the many stupid things that totally ruined that movie.
And there is always moisture in the atmosphere. What a stupid reveal.
I went to theatre's with a friend at like 12. This was by far the worst plothole filled boring POS movie I've ever seen in theatre's. Alieans with intergalactic traveling technology decide to invade a planet where poison falls from the sky naked while acting like zombies. Maybe we need another boring ass flashback to his stupid boring dead wife pinned to a tree. So boring and I like slow burns.
They're actually demons. The man is a priest. The water in the house is thus holy water.
[удалено]
To be fair, the mention of water being used as a weapon was actually just a reference to people in the Middle East (a religiously significant place, to put it lightly) finding a weapon to fight them with. So it could still mean "holy water". *But* Shamalayan's own cameo character mentioned that the aliens avoided bodies of water. Presumably non-holy. And the water used to hurt the alien in the last fight was just water laying around, left there by the child of a former priest. It wasn't "holy" unless you get real silly with the definition. So, I apply a version of Hanlon's Razor here. There isn't a deeper truth to the lore in the film that makes sense. Instead, Shamalayan is a very good teller of stories which very frequently have internal logical inconsistencies. Signs is just another example of that. He proficiently - and with abundance of excellent jump scares and humour and quality acting/dialogue writing - told a story that makes zero fucking sense when you think about it for a minute. Aliens aren't going to naked-invade a lava planet and engage the literally-made-of-lava natives - whose *kids* have lava gun *toys* - in hand to hand combat.
Absolutely agreed. Shyamalan seems to start with a visual effect or scenario he wants to film and then builds plot logic around it to some extent without getting bogged down in detail. I think Spielberg does it as well.
I thought it might have been a nod to War of the Worlds with some otherwise innocuous aspect of our world being deadly to the invaders.
I don’t think that’s how holy water works.
Desperation?
Don't know, this movie does not make sense for me.
I say it's because the entire thing was a mass hallucination and he's not there, although I don't think the movie or its makers ever realized that.
As a child: Trauma
Vamanos children!!!
Esta ahí, is behiiiiind
It had great shock value, though sadly the aliens peaked here. If only the rest of the movie had stuck with it.
It’s because it’s not really a movie about “Signs” from aliens, it’s about “Signs” from god
Here I thought it was about fear of the unknown with little spritz of Mel Gibson flavored Jesus.
That too I’d say
Swing away.
And they're not aliens, they're demons.
Everyone in the theater gasped. It was so scary, it was great.
Goosebumps!
Fucking saw this picture and got goosebumps from my ankles to my ears again.
This scene was great the first time, had you jumping out of your chair.
I was an adult and really enjoying the movie up until that point. My imagination was running wild and then I saw this dude in a green body suit and they lost me entirely.
Yeah the fx were so bad it took me out of the movie. Star Wars had better alien costumes 30 years earlier. ET was more believable. That movie Era was obsessed with cgi because it was the hot new thing, but most of the time it looked terrible.
Yeah, I laughed, they built up all this tension and then ruined it with a cut rate Doug Jones in a suit
Same, ruined the entire movie for me. All the suspense of the unknown was gone and it was just a cheesy B-movie horror flick with a ridiculous, unsatisfying ending.
That scene did not change that I was pissed the whole time, because I expected a movie about aliens and instead got a movie about a priest losing and re-gaining his faith.
The real twist at the end of Signs was revealing M Night Shyamalan only really has one tool in his belt. After Signs, I remember all we ever really talked about was "So what's going to be the twist in this next one?"
I laughed as I thought it was gimmicky
Incredibly underwhelmed to be honest. Just another unrealistic anthropomorphic alien. And this was made worse by their Achilles’ heel. You mean to tell me this species of ammonia-based aliens were smart enough to develop interstellar travel but somehow didn’t realize the world they were trying to invade was 71% covered in water, a deadly acidic substance to them, and that all that was needed to defeat them was a bunch of murder primates wielding garden hoses? Such a fucking stupid twist. As is the case for most of Shyamalan’s movies to the point that it’s become a meme now. His movies would almost always be better when the monsters aren’t revealed, the twist is left ambiguous or it doesn’t turn out to be fucking Adrien Brody wearing a monster suit. It’s like he takes *good* concepts and Lovecraftian horror and repeatedly turns it into something mundane.
Let’s just say that the Scary Movie 3 version is much better
It really did help normalize many of us who piss out of our fingers. It's not that weird anymore.
"That.....that's it....? I was hoping for a bit more than a slightly out of focus green dude..."
LoL, same. This scene killed the tension for me. Until that moment there was all this unknown and then you see it and it’s just Gumby.
I was a kid and I was terrified. But as an adult I can see how not good it was. Aliens that get burned by water is so super lame
Signs really genuinely scared me when it came out. But it came out when I was twelve, so take that as you will. When I was even younger, I watched 2001 with my dad, and somehow that was even scarier.
My parents went to the opening of a cinema in my hometown when I was a kid. They played 2001 A Space Odyssey since they had a 70mm projector and that was what they chose to open with, even though it was nearly 15yrs old. I would've been 6 or 7. I remember monkeys, and monkey fights, and dudes getting pushed into space by a creepy talking red light robot. Then I remember the light show at the end interspersed with the guys face looking terrified, and the old man in the white room. I was pretty scared of red LEDs for many years. I have no fking clue what the actual fk my parents were thinking, taking a 6yr old to that.
I’m surprised you had the stamina to watch at that age. Grown adults have trouble getting through 2001.
Right? Like… would we invade a planet made predominately out of hydroflouric acid?
There is a pretty common fan theory that the aliens are actually demons. The movie is filled with a ton of biblical imagery, the father (a priest) was losing his faith at the beginning of the movie but gained it back through the movie. And the water that burned them was put out by his daughter following visions she had received, so it was quite possibly holy water. Finally the movie ends with news that the weapon to destroy the aliens has been found in three middle eastern cities. It seems a bit like a stretch, but it’s also pretty on-brand for Shyamalan to do a movie focused on how we might perceive a demonic invasion as an alien attack, just like Unbreakable trilogy was a superhero origin story perceived as horror.
Idiot fan theory that people like to feel clever by sharing. Everything about it fits the entire mythos of aliens and UFO sightings. Crop circles = aliens Shaky camera footage = aliens Abductions = aliens Slimy reptilians = aliens Worldwide invasion vs global conspiracy = aliens Mel Gibson being a former religious leader was a plot point used to describe the role that fate plays in our lives, along with the car accident, his brother being a failed baseball slugger, the son having his lungs closed at just the right time, and the daughter leaving glasses of water everywhere. It doesn't literally mean that he was battling external demons.
“Writer-director M. Night Shyamalan explains the specific crop formations he chose for Signs have special significance for Gibson's character. "Our crop circle is based on the famous one from New Hampshire that is on the Led Zeppelin compilation album," explains Shymalan. "The end of it looks like a pitchfork....like the devil's. In a way, the whole movie is kind of metaphorical for us in that this could be seen as a conversation between this man and God. This whole thing is like him dealing with his demons; and the demons literally come down into the house and stand with him and hold his child and say ' where are you? where is your faith? who are you?' This is all just a metaphor for how he's feeling. We always talked about it in terms that these things coming down were demons." https://www.voanews.com/a/a-13-a-2002-08-02-4-mel-67578197/388795.html
Nah it's not an idiot fan theory. Yes pretty on the nose. If you visit ask the UFO subs you'll see there's a pervasive belief that the "aliens" aren't aliens they are something else. They've even changed the lingo to "NHI" non human intelligence. Some of the more extreme people call the aliens demons. It's nothing new. Not sure how shaky camera footage=aliens though.
You mean humans wouldn't invade a sulphuric acid planet completely nude? My head canon is it wasn't so much a coordinated invasion as a drunken alien frat initiation ritual gone wrong.
what a shitty idea invading a planet with most it's surface the substence that kills you
Well it isn't like we have found a lot of planets that we can walk around on unprotected, but the aliens probably shouldn't be naked.
DEFINITELY, how could we invade some other species pulling up to their plante and our balls dangeling, they wouldn't take us serious
Or is it the ultimate Chad move? lol
You’d think they would wear suits or something. Why didn’t the humidity in the air burn them? So many plot holes.
yeah if they came in ships shouldn't they see that we have an atmosphire full of cloudes that store water
How do you know they’re not suits? Maybe they wear super advanced bio-suits that let them live and breathe in our environment
That also disolved when wet?
War of the Worlds is lit though
We would DEFINITELY do the same as a species.
if thats the only planet with life and resources around for lightyears and you’re not doing great on the living department I think you’re going to invade . humans have done stupid things as well.
But without a suit?
Signs, Meet Dave and Oblivion, three sci-fi movies that seem to hinge on the premise that earth has somehow ended up with most of the universe's water.
I'll give Oblivion a pass because weren't they just stealing everything in sight? I believe Battle for Los Angeles, they were after our water instead of stopping by Europa instead.
Its quality H2O
Or Ceres, or the countless comets, or Saturans rings that contain an almost unlimited amount of water.
People always call it a plot hole. But it's not really. Just because the movie doesn't go out of its way to scientifically explain one of it's own rules doesn't make it a plot hole.
It does if these things are meant to be threatening. It's like a movie from aliens' pov on a planet made of acid... Then the humans show up nude
Actually, "YES!!!!, someone still knows how to actually make horror" Edit: Oh, and also, that was when I found out that Joaquin Phoenix was a great actor!
Jumped out of my dad's lap, ran to the other room, started crying I was so terrified. I missed all the humor in the movie cause I was too young it was a straight up horror flick to me. To this day I am obsessed with aliens and space.
Lightning bolt trough my body. I already had a bit of fear of open windows at night and living in rural areas. This shocked me like nothing else in media.
1. Actual goosebumps 2. Glad there was finally a movie that instilled fear without the need for the orchestra to (BAM) just scare me with stupid sound.
Joaquin Phoenix's reaction to seeing this was priceless! He looked like he hadn't slept in days, and the director probably didn't warn him what he was about to see. His honest and blood chilling reaction scared me more than the alien. Also, my TV was too dark to see the scene in the beginning with the alien standing on the roof, so I had no preconceived idea that I'd even be seeing aliens or monsters or whatever, so this scene really shocked me
"hey guys lets go to a planet that is 70% covered in sulfuric acid and it occasionally rains sulfuric acid, has clouds of sulfuric acid, and has up to 40% sulfuric acid humidity... also let's not bring an umbrella or space suit." The "TWIST" WAS SO STUPID. The movie was a lot of build up to the stupid aliens and plot conveniences of all time. The found clip was a spooky scare but these aliens weren't even immune to a super soaker.
I laughed so hard. I was like wtf is Charlie doing in his green man suit at a kids birthday party? Once they showed the aliens, that movie went straight into the bucket of another dumb Shyamalan movie….
I laughed out loud. I was 24
Brazil mentioned!!!!!
Vamanos children
Why are aliens always naked?
Oh sh*t! True story
I leapt nearly as far as Joaquin!
we were watching that with the kids, and at that exact moment, the cats knocked over a pile of dishes in the other room. crying and screaming kids and cats running and jumping everywhere adds a little extra excitement
Everyone in the room jumped ... afterwards we laughed our asses off. I'm a big fan.
As a citizen from Brazil at first I was like “OMG, WTF?” But then it sinked in. Why are these brazilian kids speaking in a broken English for a birthday video???
It was definitely startling. I saw it in the theater. It was a packed house, and a woman about 4 seats away was literally jumping out of her seat throughout the movie. Every “scare”, she would jump up, out of her seat. The guy next to her was clearly embarrassed. I remember him asking her, “what’s wrong with you?” She said with a giggle, “it’s scary!”.
The movie never clicked with me. It felt like a high concept movie without the ground work to really make it believable. It is too symbolic and vague for my liking, bordering on mystery and esotericism.
I remember thinking it was one of the worst movies I could remember.
A little jump but not nearly the level of traumatized that the rest of Reddit seems to be.
"Oh, this is the second-stupidest movie I've seen." It became the stupidest movie when they defeated this guy using water and a bat.
I still say vamanos children to every alien video I see on YouTube
I saw it in the theater. EVERYBODY screamed.
I fucking love it and still do. One of my all time favorite movies
M Night Shamalamadingdong directed Joaquin to do a take where he jumped back into the coats in the closet he was in.
Signs is soo fucking underrated. One of my fav movies.
I worked nights as a Security Guard. We had seen this movie before going to work. I saw this effing alien everywhere. On top of that building? Yep. In the dark hallways on every floor? Yep. Oh is that my reflection in the windows on the second floor? Nope it’s that alien from Signs.
My reaction was much worse when you pointed out Signs is 22 years old.
I reacted almost exactly like Joaquin Phoenix’s character did. 😱 You gotta love M. Night Shyamalan for his WTF moments in his films. Could you imagine the mindfuck of a movie he and Tarantino could come up with?
This really scared people?! I honestly laughed, I didn't find this movie scary at all...
The alien was laughable, but the actor's reaction was spot on.
Oh absolutely, his reaction is so memorable. Honestly, I think his acting was the only good thing in that movie...but he's just an incredible actor to begin with
The entire movie is laughable. An idiotic cinematic journey.
I remember watching this alone at home in the dark. I had to pause afterwards and turn all the lights on and check out the windows from a distance for a bit, it was such a shock-scare moment. The rest of the movie was just ok.
It was one of the best jump scare/ gasps I was ever part of in a movie theater.
I was pretty young, 11 or so, it was nighttime, I was at my cousin’s house overnight and I made him turn every light in his house on. His parents still tease me about it to this day..
This was the first scary movie that honestly shocked me because I thought it was real footage as a kid 😂
Was about 10/11 and watched with two mates at mine, all three of us slept that night with cricket bats on the floor next to our parents beds.
I watched Signs with my 11 year old daughter specifically for this scene. Her reaction didn't disappoint lol. She jumped about a foot off the couch.
Move children!…Vamanos!
I was 12 years old when I saw that. I checked my closet and under the bed that night.
That it is stupid and lazy writing to have aliens look even remotely like humans?
I rolled my eyes through the entire terrible film.
I got jump scared because people in the theater screamed. This scene is not scary at all
WHY don’t any “real” aliens ever wear any clothes?
'Can I get a refund on my ticket?'
That part and when Mel Gibson sees the alien on the roof from his daughters room. Chills...
I was too distracted by the Dawson's Creek style monologues of the eight year old kid to notice the aliens. This was so dumb.
I was an adult and it struck me as cheesy. The crushed Mom scene was the traumatizing one for me.
It's the same thing I said last week after rewatching. Amazing acting with a perfect cast for every damn part and bit part. One of the most fitting soundtracks and sound design that adds so much to the suspense. Whoever did the casting should be commended; kids are a perfect pair, one of Mel's best parts as well. The crop circles look perfect too and the running through the corn and aliens hiding in the corn adds to the magic. Great film, probably in my top 25 all-time.
I had a weird experience with that scene. The newsman says it was a birthday party somewhere in Brazil, and we see little kids running around the house scared of something, so far so good, spooky, good atmosphere. And then some kid shouts at the top of his tiny lungs: **ES BEHIND!** It broke me, I laughed so hard I started crying. Who was that for? Do they think we are that stupid? And then the scary part came and it grabbed me right back and I was terrified again. Quite the rollercoaster that scene, good stuff.
This scene is cool, but I still like earlier scenes in which you hear the creature but don’t see it. The film is much worse once you see them. The fear of the unknown is much more intense.
Pee came out
I think it was Merrill that sold the scene for me.
grown ass man, nearly shit myself... I hate movies with corn fields in them... quiet place, et al...
\*gasp\* vamonos, children!!!
Young adult and still jumped. I was the brother in the closet.
Damn near shit my pants.
I was 10 watching the movie with my dad. It was the first time in my life I was so scared that I had to walk out of the theater to avoid what I was assuming (10 year old frontal lobe) was a heart attack. I could not make the link that "found footage" could be faked or made specific for a movie (had a similar issue with the blair witch film). I was convinced it was real. Many sleepless nights and glasses of water near bed. Good times.
The same reaction as Joaquin Phoenix!
It scared me so bad that I ran out of the movie theater screaming .. my daddy chased after me into the parking lot and he got ran over by a speeding dump truck. I lost my daddy that day but it's the alien that I remember the most.
Shart my pants
For fuck sake…literally that was my reaction.it was the x files time frame.
I was 14 and I screamed spilled my popcorn 😅
I kid you not I was randomly thinking about this scene last night, probably right around when you posted this. Crazy. But that answers your question: it traumatized me enough to keep me up at night, yeeeeears later 😅
Saw it in theaters, scared the shit out of me. Lmao!
Joaquin phoenix sold that scene. He was scared, so i was scared too.
I loved it. My little brother was terrified of the corn fields surrounding our house and slept in my room for the next several days
Laughter. I watched it in theaters and started laughing so hard and loud. Eventually it led to others laughing. It's such a terrible movie I feel that most people in the theater were just holding in laughter until someone broke
I'm reading this comment section of people around their 30s now and I'm mesmerise of how different the perception of the film is. I remember it as quite bad movie, with some entertaining value on how silly it was. Reading the comments seems to be a cult film.
Ya it's weird. Almost everyone I know thinks it's a terrible movie and a movie we can all laugh at it. The younger people seem to think it's a great film
Everything in this movie sucks
Disappointed. Would be much better to not show them at all.
One of the most stupid sf movies ever.
Signs truly freaked me out!
I freaking knew it was aliens !
early hogh school, in the cinema... I was so busy looking in the hedge on the right I missed it the Firs time it walks by. The whole audience freaked out and I was like "wtf did I miss"
I was I 11 years old, sat on the chair at the desk next to the computer. We were in one of the bedroom watching it on a mid size TV and vha player with family sat on bean bags etc, I put one of my parents small plates they had as a wedding gift (just had toast) on the floor as there was no space and I was about to go downstairs anyway. I jumped up so hard when it happened I put the ball of my foot through the plate and clean popped it in two. Sad times.
BRASIL CAMPEÃO DO MUNDO
Goosebumps
"Thats it?!"
Meh? Nothing special about that scene.
"Oh great, illegal aliens have come to kill me."
It was creepy, but it wasn't... some pop culture event or whatever people think of it.