Signs was actually Roger Ebert's favorite Shamaylan film. Now he may have been misguided when he only gave The Sixth Sense three stars instead of labeling it a classic but that may have been just a mistake he made at the time. Ebert was willing to admit he'd misjudged films over the course of time. The point is he gave Signs four stars and considered a masterpiece. In his rave of the movie he said Shamaylan uses the movie to 'play the audience like a piano'. He pointed out that the film is always building towards something. It's still building to it when it ends were the last lines of his review - and he didn't consider that a failing.

I've never understood the controversy over Signs. There are ohter Shamaylan films I think are disasters - The Villiage, The Happening - but I always considered Signs a quiet masterpiece. Maybe the reason it's never regarded higly is because compared to so much of his later work, it's a film completely of subtlety and quiet WITH a sense of humor that many of his other films are sorely lacking. And though I know I'm in the minority, I loved the twist at the end and think it's one of his best.

Shamaylan is one of the best writers when he writes about children. It's why we loved The Sixth Sense, it's why The Visit was a return to form. He has two of the greatest child actors in history working for him: Rory Culkin and Abagail Breslin. This was Breslin's PROFESSIONAL DEBUT and its an asotnishing piece of work for someone who wasn't even five when the movie wrapped. It helps that she, like Rory Culkin is froma family of actors: her next movie was co-starring with Spencer and of course Joaquin Phoenix comes from a similar family. And the reason that Unbreakable works as well as it does is as much due to Spencer Clark's work as Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson. One of the best scenes in the film is when Clark is determined to prove that his father is superhuman and points a gun at him. Willis first tries to talk him out of it and then tells him it's true, but if he shoots him the bullet will bounce off him and hit his mother. The scene plays as much as the desperation in Clark's eyes and tone in that moment. Historically films Shamaylan makes that have children at the center work better than ones that have adults. And that's a large part of the reason I think Signs is a masterpiece.