Signs Ending Explained (In Detail)
Despite being two decades old, Signs is a film that remains relevant in pop culture, thanks to its deeper themes and subtext. From divisive director M. Night Shyamalan, 2002's Signs stars Mel Gibson as Graham Hess, a former priest grieving the loss of his wife and grappling with his faith in the aftermath of her death. The film begins with Graham discovering crop circles in his cornfield, setting him on a path to re-evaluating the world and his place within it.
Gibson is joined by Academy Award winner Joaquin Phoenix, Abigail Breslin, and Rory Culkin, who star as Graham's brother Merrill, daughter Bo, and son Morgan, respectively. Each member of the family has their own quirk: Merrill is a failed minor-league baseball player, Morgan is asthmatic, and Bo leaves half-drunk glasses of water all over the house. Their individual character traits, and Graham's crisis of faith, are all significant to the film's story, leaning into Signs' central themes.
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When hostile aliens invade, the Hess family fight for their lives in their farmhouse. In a final twist that many consider a plot hole, the aliens are beaten back by a severe aversion to water, and Graham's faith is ultimately restored by his family's survival of the ordeal. Though the M. Night Shyamalan twist of the aliens' water allergy is considered one of the film's worst aspects, it actually connects to the deeper themes of the film.
Widely thought to be a glaring plot hole is Signs' aliens invading a planet composed almost entirely of a substance that they are deathly allergic to. Of course, on the surface, the aliens' weakness certainly seems to be a convenient way of driving the technologically superior
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