Signs (2002)

Borrowing heavily from "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," Shyamalan tries to lighten his trademark gloomy tone -- and almost kills the suspense he's working so hard to achieve.

Mr. Shyamalan is a new national treasure, as attuned to our sensibilities and everyday life as Steven Spielberg.

A beautifully crafted, white-knuckle, roller-coaster ride of old-school filmmaking -- the kind that believes that the less you show, the better.

Even if Signs suffers a little from uneven pacing and mismatched tones of reverent homage (to "The Birds" and "War of the Worlds"), soul-searching and silly comedy, the jokes are clever, the tension continual and expertly calibrated, and the performances -- are both deep and moving.

For a big-budget Hollywood feature, the film places an unusually high amount of stock in the audience's imagination; not since "The Others" or "The Blair Witch Project" have so many shocks been indirect or kept teasingly out of view.