<div style='font: 11pt arial; text-align: left; '>It was the fact that the theme and the plot were completely disparate elements of the film. In a well-told story all the elements should feel necessary to the story's structure in some way. The dialogue, the characters, the plot, the setting, the theme...all should seem as though this is how they <i>had</i> to be in order for the story to work the way it did. In the case of Signs, however, there's a feeling of contingency between the plot and theme. Both were begging for your attention separately instead of acting interdependently, which caused them to work against one another and detract from the story as a whole. In other words, I didn't feel as if the alien invasion was necessary to the "miracle" theme, and vice versa - at least, not in the way the story was constructed. Both were interesting in and of themselves, of course, but they failed to interact.</div>
[b]Sorry, it looks like I'm going to have to kill you in an instant.[/b]