In the movie Signs, directed by Manoj Night Shyamalan, Shyamalan’s message from the film is that it covers faith, kinship, and extraterrestrials. In addition, there’s a reason for everything, whether it’s good or bad, God has a plan for everything In the movie we’re presented to a family of four called the Hess family. The family lives in Doylestown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. The father, Graham Hess is a former priest whose wife, Colleen, died in a horrific traffic accident.
No longer practicing religiously, Graham lives with his asthmatic son, Morgan, daughter Bo, who leaves water glasses over the house because of various reasons, and Graham’s younger brother, Merrill, a former minor league baseball star who never made it to the major leagues because he swung too hard and struck out too often. Merrill would always swing too hard because he said, “It felt wrong not to”. Ray Reddy is the man responsible for Colleen’s death, for which he feels deeply remorseful. Given that Colleen died in a traffic accident, Graham becomes an atheist at the beginning of the film.
The conflict between father and son is presented in the film. Since Colleen died, Morgan blames his father because he couldn’t protect his mom, and feels like he can’t protect the rest of the family. He then starts becoming a fatherly figure to his sister, Bo, and tries his best to protect her. Likewise, there’s a pattern of hatred towards others. For example, Graham hated God for killing his wife, and Morgan hated his father because he doesn’t believe that he’ll protect the rest of the family. Towards the beginning, Graham discovers crop circles in his field.
And later crop circles similar to the one in Graham’s field appear around the world. There is an alien invasion. People from all over the world are believing that the world is coming to an end. To point out, there is two types of philosophies presented in the film. The first philosophy deals about that everything in life has a purpose. Everything is designed by God himself. And everyone is in it together. God doesn’t make mistakes and he has a design for everything. As human beings it is not our choice to call shots and take over.
That role is for God, he chooses when we decide to die, and he decides the course of actions throughout the world. However, the second philosophy deals with the exact opposite from the first one. Everything is just by chance. There is no God. And everyone is alone. Now in the beginning of the film, the audiences learns that Graham is more leaned over to the second philosophy. After his wife died, he didn’t think God existed anymore and lost faith. He thought everything happened just out of coincidence. He now believed that everything in life was just by chance and that it wasn’t part of God’s design.
Not everything is going to go smooth and easy. Life is going to have its ups and downs, that’s just the world we live in. Equally important, towards the end, the family finds an alien in their house. Morgan is taken hostage and has another asthma attack. Graham remembers his wife’s dying words, which were “Tell Merrill to swing away”. He tells Merrill to “swing away” and Merrill attacks the alien with a baseball bat, and it releases Morgan, but not before it attempts to poison Morgan by releasing a toxin from its body.
But because he is having an asthma attack, the poison doesn’t get into his lungs. They discover that water reacts like acid with the alien’s skin, and Merrill smashes all the water glasses Bo had left all over the house. Finally, Merrill hits the alien into furniture and water splashes on its face, killing it. Within this scene, God provided lots of signs for Graham in order to save his family from the alien. Bo leaving all the glasses of water around the room, Morgan having asthma, Colleen’s last words, and Merrill’s ability to swing the baseball bat hard.
Now if Colleen was alive, it would have been possible that the whole family could’ve been killed. She would’ve picked up the glasses of water that Bo left, and they would’ve never been able to kill the alien. With that, Merrill’s true purpose was never to become a professional baseball player, but to protect his family. With this event, Graham finally regains his faith and becomes a priest once again. He was tested by God to how strong his faith is. To summarize, Shyamalan directed this movie to show that there’s a reason for everything, whether it’s good or bad, God has a plan for everything.