A baby monitor that picks up inexplicable sounds. Instead of flashy special effects, Shyamalan creates his world out of everyday objects. The possibility of aliens is the catalyst for fear, but this family needs none, because it has already suffered a great blow. There is as little plot as possible, and as much time and depth for the characters as he can create, all surrounded by ominous dread. In "Signs," he does what Hitchcock said he liked to do, and plays the audience like a piano. In " Unbreakable" (2000) he created a psychological duel between two men, and it was convincing even though we later discovered its surprising underlying nature, and all was redefined. In " The Sixth Sense" (1999) he made a ghost story that until the very end seemed only to be a personal drama-although there was something there, some buried hint, that made us feel all was not as it seemed. In a time when incessant action is a style, he persuades us to play close attention to the smallest nuances. In a time when Hollywood mistakes volume for action, Shyamalan makes quiet films. "The history of the world's future is on TV right now," Morgan says. A video taken at a birthday party shows a glimpse of the most alarming thing. The voices of the anchors reveal confusion and fear. The movie uses TV news broadcasts to report on events around the world, but they're not the handy CNN capsules that supply just what the plot requires. He catches a glimpse of something in a corn field. The crop circles do not explain the feelings so much as add to them. There is an old-fashioned farmhouse and barn, and wide cornfields, and from the very first shot there seems to be something. Hess lives on the farm with his brother Merrill ( Joaquin Phoenix) and his children Morgan and Bo ( Rory Culkin and Abigail Breslin). The reason for that is revealed midway in the film, a personal tragedy I will not reveal. Not that it matters, because he has lost his faith. Since he has two children, it takes us a beat to compute that he must be Episcopalian. We discover he is a priest only belatedly, when someone calls him "Father." "It's not 'Father' anymore," he says. Mel Gibson stars as Father Graham Hess, who lives on a farm in Bucks County, Pa. I cannot think of a movie where silence is scarier, and inaction is more disturbing. It is the way Shyamalan has us listening intensely when there is nothing to be heard. It is not just what we hear that is frightening. The purpose of the film is to evoke pure emotion through the use of skilled acting and direction, and particularly through the soundtrack. I will not even say whether aliens appear in the movie, because whether they do or not is beside the point. The genius of the film, you see, is that it isn't really about crop circles, or the possibility that aliens created them as navigational aids.
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