Line #13 YMMV/Signs


1	* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation: The aliens. Their complete lack of armor and weapons is usually cited simply as incompetence, but some more serious hypotheses have been put forward. The default assumption is that we're not supposed to understand why. The movie is attempting to convey an alien invasion not from a gutsy action hero's perspective who blows stuff up and saves the day, but from a normal family who's just trying to hunker down and live through it. We don't understand why the aliens do what they do the way they do because said family almost certainly wouldn't have any clue.
2	** One prominent theory is that the aliens [[HumansAreTheRealMonsters were actually peaceful, and only began attacking humans after the humans were aggressive towards them]]
3	** The other most prominent theory is that they were actually [[DoingInTheScientist demons defeated by holy water]].
4	** In-Universe, the radio personality speculates near the end of the film that the aliens were only committing a massive raid and not trying to invade or conquer the planet, citing that he saw them drag a man and his family into their ship as evidence.
5	** A less serious interpretation is that this was the aliens' version of a frathouse prank, akin to forcing a pledge to try to, say, get honey from a beehive naked or something. Similarly, these are the extraterrestrial equivalent of the cast of ''{{Series/Jackass}}'', doing stupid stuff that could get themselves hurt to make their audience laugh.
6	** They could also be a race similar to Creator/StephenKing's ''Literature/TheTommyknockers'', who use all manner of advanced technology but don't actually understand any of it and are actually fairly stupid.
7	** Another interpretation, this one explored somewhat by WebVideo/ChrisStuckmann in his examination of the film, utilizes some fridge logic. Why would a race of aliens with a weakness to water travel to what, from their perspective, is essentially a DeathWorld? They're not stupid, they're just incredibly desperate for resources.
8	** Still another interpretation is that [[AllJustADream the alien invasion is really a dream Graham is having]] as he mentally wrestles with his loss of faith after his wife dies. This would seemingly explain odd scenes like the illustration in Morgan's book that shows people who look like Graham and his children lying dead outside a burning house, the strange conversation with the army recruiter which sounds like something from a Creator/DavidLynch film, and the alien's [[WeaksauceWeakness weaknesses]] like water. It's all dream logic at work.
9	** Another possibility is that the aliens don't have water on their homeworld and didn't know that it would bring harm to them.
10	** Yet another theory, in a more serious twist on the "frathouse prank" one listed above, is that this is some sort of Predator-style hunting challenge or manhood ritual; being dropped into a DeathWorld and made to fight its inhabitants with no protective gear or weapons.
11	* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: Music/JamesNewtonHoward's score. PERIOD. "Hand of Fate" in particular.
12	* BigLippedAlligatorMoment: The scene in which Graham and the kids come across an illustration in Morgan's book that shows a house that looks just like theirs set on fire, with three people (a man and two kids) lying dead outside it. The scene is pretty lengthy, is filled with ominous music and set-up, and yet it's never explained or brought up again.
13	* ContrivedCoincidence: The sheer number of glasses that Bo leaves around the house, for no other reason than to be knocked over during the climax. Considering her fixation, one would assume that the first thing would be teaching her not to keep filling them to the brim every time, but even admitting she refuses to do so, there is no reason for the other three people in the house to keep leaving them around instead of, you know, bringing them back to the kitchen and emptying them.
14	* DelusionConclusion: One theory is that the events of the movie never actually happened outside of Graham's head; he was just dreaming about them as he mentally wrestled with the loss of his faith after his wife died. Adherents point to odd moments like the illustration in Morgan's book that shows people who look like Graham and his children lying dead outside a burning house, the strange conversation with the army recruiter, and the aliens being terrifying yet surprisingly easy to defeat.
15	* DiagnosedByTheAudience: Bo's extremely specific aversion to finishing glasses of tap water for fear of it being contaminated could be read as a symptom of OCD. Some viewers have also interpreted her emotional flatness and strange behavior as signs of autism.
16	* FanficFuel:
17	** The precise nature of the aliens and the reasons for them invading Earth.
18	** How the invasion played out in the rest of the state, the country, and the world.
19	** Who (or what) was the mysterious woman in the diner who scared other patrons and then vanished?
20	* FridgeLogic: How exactly would the aliens have dealt with something like, oh, a rainstorm? Or snowpack in the parts of the world that were experiencing winter at the time? This may be the only alien invasion at risk of getting called off on account of weather.
21	* HilariousInHindsight: The scene where Graham finds it hard to cuss and scare intruders off his farm was already funny in the first place. Post Mel Gibson's widely publicized, coarsely worded fits? ''Hysterical''!
22	* ItWasHisSled: It's easy to forget that (apart from the twist) the film originally received praise for its unconventional take on the AlienInvasion story, and for its unique mix of science-fiction, horror, drama, and spirituality. However, it is now better known as "The one about the aliens who can be killed by water", largely due to this PlotTwist being thoroughly mocked by its detractors.
23	* MemeticLoser: The various versus communities tease the aliens to no end due to their laughably exploitable weakness and apparent obliviousness of said weakness. The aliens have lower survivability odds than {{Red Shirts}}, and it's common to see commenters immediately assume they lose any fight featuring them.
24	* MemeticMutation:
25	** The [[NightmareFuel disturbing]] "It's Behind" scene is probably the most parodied in the movie, due to its over-the-top drama and suspense leading up to the alien's appearance. It was mostly parodied on Website/{{YTMND}}, though.
26	** The scene where Merrill panics after seeing the footage of aliens on TV has become a popular reaction GIF.
27	** The shot of Merrill and the kids wearing tinfoil hats has also been frequently used to mock conspiracy theories and those who believe in them.
28	* MoralEventHorizon: The wounded alien attacks the house because he wants {{revenge}} on Graham for cutting off his fingers. All right, that's understandable... wait, he's going to [[RevengeByProxy get revenge on Graham]] by attacking, with murderous intent, ''[[WouldHurtAChild Graham's son]]?'' Dick move.
29	* {{Narm}}:
30	** The decision to have the aliens be weak to ''water'' is widely considered to be a mind-numbingly stupid creative decision that makes the finale unintentionally ''hilarious''. When Graham mentions the water theory, his son even says "that sounds made up." And it's not that he doesn't believe him, it's more like there is NO WAY the aliens could be that stupid.
31	** Bo's bizarre behavior fluctuates pretty wildly between being genuinely unsettling and so over-the-top it's goofy.
32	** The confrontation with an Alien at the end has a flashback suddenly occur where Graham listens to his wife, in her dying words, list off things to do with his family, where she notes she was just taking a walk before dinner… Graham noting “she loved walks.” Already silly itself (though it can be excused by Graham, understandably, being at loss for words due to tragedy), she then makes several requests, seemingly having enough life in her to do so, all topped off with her last one where she asks Graham to tell Merill to “swing away,” which apparently means for Merill to grab a baseball bat and “swing away” at the Alien in this particular moment. Yes, seriously just beating the shit out of the monster is the way to go and our protagonist had to recall a very specific line from his dying wife to initiate exactly that. And that’s on top of the Aliens’ weakness of water being shown in full, too!
33	*** Oh, and if you haven't seen the movie you might wonder: but how did hitting the alien with a bat reveal their lethal weakness to water? Well, you see, Bo is extremely peculiar about drinking water, so she just keeps filling whole glasses, taking little sips and then leaving them around, so the house is lined with glasses full of water that get knocked around, spilling their content over the alien. Yes, really. To make matters worse, it isn't even necessary, the bat was doing a pretty good job on the alien by itself, and we didn't need to know how the invasion was repelled. The only reason for that detail seems to be that they just needed to put in a twist of sorts.
34	** The famous Brazilian birthday party scene is considered one of the scariest and memorable moments of the movie. However, for Brazilian viewers it can be unintentionally hilarious because: the man who recorded's name is Romero Valadarez (a Spanish name rather than a Brazilian-Portuguese one), one of woman speaks in a Carioca (Rio de Janeiro) accent rather than the local "Gaúcho" accent, a scared Graham screams "Vamonos" (''Spanish'') to the kids in the television, one of the kids speaks in Portugese from ''Portugal'' and then for no reason screams in English "IT'S BEHIND". The Brazilian dub of the movie straight-up dubbed over the boy. On the other hand, the tension of the scene is still praised, and the people from Passo Fundo love that their mostly unknown city recieved such attention.
35	* NeverLiveItDown: ''Signs'' is actually rated pretty highly on websites like IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, and Metacritic. Still, the average film buff might be forgiven for not knowing that, due to how much infamy the aliens' WeaksauceWeakness has attracted.
36	* NightmareRetardant: One of the more infamous cases. The direction surrounding the aliens is genuinely creepy, but by the end of the movie, you realize that you were cowering in fear of a monster with a very unoriginal design, is barely stronger than a normal human, treat a garden hose like a flamethrower and have trouble with ''pantry doors.''
37	* OlderThanTheyThink:
38	** The death of Graham's wife is taken beat for beat from an old {{Glurge}} story circulated on the internet.
39	** This isn't the first horror movie featuring invaders from another world who turn out to have an unexpected weakness to water. The 1986 cult classic ''Film/NeonManiacs'' featured exactly the same twist (and was ''also'' thoroughly mocked for it).
40	* OneSceneWonder:
41	** Tracy Abernathy, the teenaged pharmacist who insists on confessing her sins to Graham (despite him reminding her he isn't a pastor anymore) due to fear of the aliens and can remember every time she's sworn in the last month.
42	** The old guy at the pharmacy who writes off the crop circles as a stunt to get more people to watch soda commercials, to the point of keeping precise count of how many he sees, is pretty hilarious and shows up only once.
43	** Ray Reddy, the guilt-ridden driver who killed Mrs. Hess, gets an emotional scene apologizing to Graham before revealing he has an alien trapped in his pantry. Ray does appear in two other scenes, but only briefly and without speaking. He's also played by M. Night Shyamalan himself.
44	** [=SFC=] Cunningham, the local recruiting officer who is a fan of Merrill's baseball career and correctly analyzes the aliens' probing attacks.
45	* RetroactiveRecognition: [[Film/{{Zombieland}} Little Rock]] saves the world, by being really, uh, [[GainaxEnding OCD]]?
46	* ShipsThatPassInTheNight: Evidently, Caroline/Graham [[https://archiveofourown.org/works/7664653 has a fanfic that teases this pairing]] while also [[Main/{{Fanon}} expanding her character]]. This is despite the fact that the two only share three scenes together and don't interact romantically.
47	* SignatureScene: Many people seem to remember the video footage scene the most, due to how terrifying that scene is.
48	* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot:
49	** Really, limiting the entirety of the worldwide "invasion" to the Hess farm and making everything an isolated incident that only the Hesses were witness to would've greatly diminished the Narm of the aliens being vulnerable to water. Reducing the number of "invaders" to just this one group of aliens would've given enough room for their incompetence to at the very least ''seem'' intentional. It's ultimately the scope that made the aliens look like such idiots.
50	** The entire [[InsufficientlyAdvancedAlien alien invasion]] lasted less than 24-hours offscreen and we only know that they left the planet because the [[CoincidentalBroadcast 6 o'clock news]] reported it. In a very opportune [[MrExposition infodump]] Merrill informs us after the fact: ''"It came on about two hours ago. Woke me up ... We won Graham. It went on all night. Everywhere. It was completely a ground battle. Mostly hand to hand. You can't see them unless you're up close. A lot of people died. Some from combat. But most from poison gas inhalation. They secrete it."'' Filming that would have made an interesting movie, instead whatever tension the film built evaporates (like the aliens themselves), which begs the question: why have a [[GreatOffscreenWar world conquest subplot]] at all if it all gets [[ContrivedCoincidence handwaved away]] in a sentence or two? Like the [[NightmareFuel/ETTheExtraterrestrial cornfield scene in E.T.]], the film begins creepily enough (also, like an earlier draft of E.T., [[Trivia/ETTheExtraTerrestrial Nocturnal Fears]], fighting off [[NotQuiteSavedEnough aliens in a farmhouse]] has the burden of potential) but the plot seems to splutter the moment the [[MonsterDelay monster shows up]]. If the alien at the end was out for revenge due to its missing fingers (how did it get out of Ray's pantry?) and could kill the entire family with poison gas why didn't it do that down in the basement? Was it hoping for a [[ItsPersonal this time it's personal]] confrontational smack-down with Graham?

Context YMMV / Signs