Ranking: 20 Highest Grossing Horror Movies Of All Time

12. Signs

Signs Mel Gibson
Buena Vista Pictures

Box Office: $408.2 million (#6)

M. Night Shyamalan rebounded from the more grounded critical and audience response to his ambitious 2000 thriller Unbreakable with this broader genre picture, a crowd-pleasing sci-fi horror film with great actors making the most of relatively familiar material.

Not all aspects will be to all tastes, especially in the third act, but Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix are terrific as brothers, while Rory Culkin and Abigail Breslin give fine performances as Gibson's kids, and Shyamalan's well-calibrated direction is perfectly-suited to the material.

Putting its well-drawn characters ahead of the inevitable creepy shenanigans (with at least one incredibly effective scare), Signs isn't a genre classic by any means, but it's easy to see why it played so well with the mainstream.

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Contributor

Stay at home dad who spends as much time teaching his kids the merits of Martin Scorsese as possible (against the missus' wishes). General video game, TV and film nut. Occasional sports fan. Full time loon.