24 Years Ago, M. Night Shyamalan Released His Weirdest Twist Ending and Fans Still Think It Makes No Sense

Although M. Night Shyamalan’s earlier horror success quickly made him a Hollywood legend, his penchant for twist endings went a bit too far with a divisive sci-fi blockbuster from 2002. Not all of M. Night Shyamalan’s movies actually have twist endings, but it is still easy to see how the director’s name became synonymous with shocking last-second revelations. For better or worse, Shyamalan’s earlier efforts The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable earned him a reputation for killer third-act reveals that turn the entire story of the preceding movie on its head.

From 2015’s found footage comeback The Visit to 2004’s offbeat blend of period drama and horror The Village, Shyamalan has often trafficked in twist endings that either elevate or ruin their movies, depending on the viewer’s perspective. However, it wasn’t until his fifth feature film that this predilection became divisive. Shyamalan’s first two films, 1992’s Praying with Anger and Wide Awake, mostly went under the radar, while 1999’s The Sixth Sense and 2000’s Unbreakable were widely praised. Thus, it was 2002’s Signs that split audiences on Shyamalan’s twists.

Signs Was Originally Released On August 2, 2002

The story of a family whose farm is besieged by aggressive aliens, Signs is a rare family-friendly horror movie that generates some genuine chills. Like Disney’s earlier Arachnophobia, this unsettling sci-fi horror doesn’t need gore to get under the skin of its audience. Mel Gibson’s former priest Father Graham, who lost his faith after the death of his wife, lives on a remote rural farm with his two young children and his brother, Joaquin Phoenix’s sweet would-be baseball pro Merrill.

When the farm is beset by alien attackers, Graham and Merrill must work with Graham’s children to keep the invading extraterrestrials at bay. That turns out to be unexpectedly easy when, at the end of the movie, Merrill knocks over a stray glass of water and mortally injures one of the aliens as a result. While this might be a big relief for the family, it was a twist that left many audience members staring in disbelief.

While Signs never claimed that its alien invaders were geniuses, the fact that they are seemingly hell bent on invading a planet that is covered in water, populated by beings that are largely composed of water, even though these extraterrestrials themselves are seemingly deathly allergic to water, raises a lot of questions. Compared to iconic sci-fi horror movies like Aliens, the ending of Signs was a letdown that felt all the more annoying thanks to the effective, genuinely haunting build-up that preceded the twist.

The Divisive Ending Of Signs Was The Beginning of the End For M. Night Shyamalan’s Twists

Although a few half hearted fan theories have posited that the aliens aren’t extra terrestrials, but rather demons, and Merill’s swing worked because Graham regained his faith in that moment, not because of the water itself, the ending of Signs was still the beginning of the end for Shyamalan’s brief reign as Hollywood’s king of the twist ending. Unlike the later Cowboys Vs Aliens, Signs was far from a flop, but its retrospective reviews couldn’t get past that corny twist, and this soon meant that later M. Night Shyamalan movies had a progressively harder time shocking viewers.