Signs, 2002

Director M. Night Shyamalan developed a reputation early on for making films with surprising twists that recontextualized everything that came before, but what makes Signs so effective as a sci-fi horror film is that there’s a twist of sorts baked into the very concept, and into Shyamalan’s filmmaking. Rather than using tight, enclosed spaces to build up suspense the way many sci-fi horror films do, in Signs, for much of its runtime at least, it’s the vastness of the spaces its characters inhabit that often feel threatening, the feeling that there is no safety to be found out in its endless Pennsylvania cornfields. Shyamalan may be the very definition of a hit-or-miss filmmaker, but in Signs his desire to always deliver something fresh and inventive to viewers and to do something he hasn’t done before paid off with this unique horror film that ensured I’ll never look at all that beautiful scenery rolling by out the window on a road trip quite the same way again.— Carolyn Petit