6. Vague Aliens - Signs
Oh, Shyamalan. What happened? You actually had a pretty good start to your career! The Sixth Sense was fantastic. Unbreakable didn't receive the same level of critical acclaim, but it still has its fans. Arguably many of the recent films have been train wrecks, but we can chalk that up to a long, drawn-out career. Signs happened while you were still fresh and relatively new to the scene. It's a wonder, then, how a man who clearly understood the need to keep certain plot points carefully hidden, and the necessity for reveals to be dramatic, would go for such a generic monster-movie alien. The first half of this movie actually holds up rather well, with alien sightings being very scarce and the tension coming from
not knowing what's out there, rather than how scary the thing is itself. However, once we see the creatures, the effect they have on us is, "...That's it?" We feel like we
should be scared because we've been waiting to see them this whole time, but they appear vaguely human-ish, green skin aside, and rarely do anything hostile. Perhaps we should be afraid of them because of what they can do? Well, that doesn't seem to work either. The intergalactic space travelers find it difficult to get through poorly-barricaded doors and, even once inside, are easily dispatched with a simple baseball bat and a glass of water. Once you get to know them, you get the feeling you'd be more scared fighting a group of apes. Heck, that sounds like a great idea. Let's go put on a Planet of the Apes movie instead.