This is How You Write Suspense: A Signs Script Analysis

M. Night Shyamalan’s 2002 film Signs is just one of those movies that just couldn’t survive the wave of the internet. Although a critical and box office success upon its release, many younger people’s relationship with it has primarily consisted of various forms of (undeserved) mockery; hearing people dissect its plot holes, seeing it get spoofed in Scary Movie 3, or watching YouTube videos that make fun of M. Night’s acting cameos. And it’s gotten to a point where I don’t think people remember just how insanely good this movie actually is. It consistently does so much with so little, leaves us on the edge of our seats the entire time, and utilizes the impending sense of existential dread that all of us choke down on a day-to-day basis to build suspense unlike any other movie. I’m here today to highlight its many positive qualities, argue why it’s a masterpiece, and point out exactly where it succeeds in being an outright textbook example of how to write a suspenseful screenplay. Let’s begin.

OPENING IMAGE

The first opens with an ominous shot of the wide open acres of corn fields that reside on our protagonist, Graham’s, property. It’s peaceful, calm, and somewhat beautiful. But then we hear the scream.

SET UP/ INCITING INCIDENT

Graham, concerned at first, shoots out of bed and approaches the bedroom doors of his children.

So far, nothing seems out of place, so he goes about his early morning routine. Then, suddenly, there’s another scream. This time, it wakes up Graham’s younger brother, Merrill, who immediately jumps into action.

It’s coming from the corn. Graham and Merrill burst into the fields, following the voices of the screaming children.

This introduction scene is one of the many examples of how to build suspense right off the bat. We jump right into the action with something that any human being can empathize with: a concerned father thinking something happened to his kids. The eerie farm setting makes this even scarier, and the endless landscape of corn crops feels as unnerving as an open ocean at night. By the end of the scene, we’re introduced to all of the primary characters, but we never get any answers to what happened to the children. They just…were in the corn (which actually is scary enough if you don’t know the plot of this movie ahead of time). But then, with that bird’s-eye view shot of the four of them standing inside a massive crop circle, we realize something far greater is taking place.

DEBATE

Much of the “debate” section is just Graham debating with himself. As the film goes on, you’ll see that Graham used to be a priest and has since lost his faith. Now that he’s found himself dead-center in the middle of what you could only call a miracle, he’s desperately searching for rational possibilities to explain it.

The children, on the other hand, are just trying to distract themselves by taking care of their dog, who seems to be sick.

Now we learn a little bit more about what’s going on. Bo’s a hypochondriac, Morgan’s a realist, and their previously friendly dog is acting crazy for some reason.

Back with the police officer, more questions arise.

Graham, now on high alert, runs over to check on his children.

After the events with Houdini the dog, we move onto the following night, where once again, strange things begin to happen…

He goes to put Bo back to bed, once again assuming that everything is fine. But then, when he looks out the window, he sees a startling image:

Graham and Merill proceed to sprint out of the house and run around both sides, splitting up. 

They think it’s just teenagers, and they want to scare them away more than anything.

Although not clarified in the script, the figure they saw was very clearly not a human, and they both know that, no matter how much they try to convince themselves otherwise.

The next day, the police officer is back at the house taking their statements, but the boys don’t know what to tell them.

Graham tries to maintain his conversation with the officer while keeping his children in order, which proves to be a difficult task. Morgan is trying to turn a baby monitor into a walkie-talkie, and Bo keeps leaving glasses of water scattered around the house.

Graham can’t handle all of this right now and turns his attention back to the officer.

The officer sits them down and begins to brief them on what could be going on here. And as they do so, all of their theories are immediately undermined by something drastic being broadcast on TV.

Whatever’s going on, it’s happening everywhere.

BREAK INTO TWO

The beginning of Act 2 has Graham going full protective father mode. Now that they’ve reached a point in this thing where nothing seems to be entirely explainable, he figures that the best thing to do is to just take their mind off of it. They don’t need the stress, especially after the tragic event that happened to them just six months prior (we don’t know exactly what happened yet, but we know it ended with their mother dying). So, Graham cuts off their access to the TV and radio until things calm down. He also decides to take them into town for a relaxing outing.

FUN AND GAMES

While in town, Morgan visits a bookstore, where he immediately begins studying up on his theory that the crop circles are extraterrestrial.

Graham picks up Morgan’s asthma medication at the pharmacy, where he once again can’t shake the “I’m not a reverend anymore” thing.

One thing’s for sure: people are getting scared, and when people get scared, they need faith.

Meanwhile, Merrill visits an army recruiting office, where we get to know a little more about his backstory.

After the entire group had somewhat uncomfortable encounters, they all meet back up in the car. Then, coming out of a store, they see someone who catches their attention…

Once they pull into their driveway, Bo’s baby monitor starts making strange sounds, and Morgan thinks it’s the aliens.

Morgan gets out of the car and climbs on top of its roof to get a better signal. Nobody wants to believe what they’re hearing, but nobody stops him.

Later that night, Graham goes outside to “talk” to his wife about everything that’s been happening. And as he does so, he has another encounter with the “visitors” that even he can’t deny.

And with that, he goes back inside and calmly tells the family that it’s time to turn on the TV…

MIDPOINT

The midpoint of the script serves as a turning point for the family. For the entire first half of the film, Graham has been denying the possibility of anything extraordinary going on. A man without faith, he simply refuses to believe. But as things get weirder, scarier, and more in his face, he shifts into a full-on believer (of what, exactly, he’s not sure). Also, I’d like to point out that, as stressful and terrifying as the events going on are, nothing truly horrible has happened yet. It all has been slow-burning, peak-behind-the-curtain suspense–and it’s done masterfully.

When they turn the TV on, they find that globally, things have escalated.

Merrill and Graham, both attempting to process whatever is going on, proceed to have a conversation about miracles. If there’s any conversation that properly conveys what the meaning behind this film is, it’s this one.

When Graham stood next to his dying wife and was able to talk to her one last time, he expected something profound; a message that he could carry with him for the rest of his life. But instead, she said nonsense: “Tell Graham to see. Tell Merrill to swing away”. It didn’t have any relevance to their lives–just a memory from a random baseball game. In his mind, she died for nothing, and as a result, he lost his faith.

BAD TO WORSE

The next morning, Graham awakens to find that Merill had dragged the TV into the hall closet, where he’s been watching obsessively.

Things are getting worse both in the world and in the house. Later that day, Graham enters the living room to find Morgan, Merrill, and Bo wearing tin foil hats. The reason is that the aliens are either here for one of two reasons: 1) they’re looking to explore for the sake of scientific observation, or 2) they’re hostile. If they’re hostile, then they need the hats.

Graham’s about to snap when he gets a phone call.

Graham goes to the mysterious Ray Reddy’s house and happens to catch him just as he’s driving away.

There’s a lot to unpack here. First of all, Ray Reddy is the man who killed Graham’s wife, now revealed to have happened because he fell asleep at the wheel. The way he tells this story eerily mirrors the story Merrill told Graham earlier about how sometimes, things are meant to be. But with this story, the thing that was meant to be wasn’t positive; it was a horrible tragedy with no greater purpose in sight. 

Also, Ray briefly mentions something coming inside his house, implying that he had encountered one of the aliens directly. He continues…

With that final note, Ray leaves. Graham doesn’t know what to think. Ray’s final words were not a subliminal message. They were not something ominous for Graham to interpret independently. No, as clear as day, he tells Graham that he encountered an alien, and he locked it in his pantry. Now, all that Graham has to do to prove that something miraculous is going on, with 100% certainty, is to go inside Ray’s house and look inside the pantry…

At the same time, Merrill is experiencing his own version of definite proof.

While this scene may not jump off the page, the final scene was one of the scariest movie moments to me as a child. Just to get you in the right mindspace, I want you to think really hard about the emotions you would experience if we actually had proof of aliens. It’s fun to sit around and speculate with friends, but if it were presented to you with 100% certainty, you would not be feeling excitement. It would be fear. All religions would immediately be undermined, all Earthly laws of reality that we accepted as true would go out the window, and the potential for disaster would become infinite. In this found footage scene of the alien walking at a birthday party, Shyamalan manages to flood our minds with all of these at once. And that’s just the beginning.

Back at Ray’s house, we cut to Graham slowly entering the kitchen.

BREAK INTO THREE

Break into 3 finds Graham and the family now 100% convinced that the aliens are real, that they are here, and that they are hostile. In response to this realization, they board up the house. And as they do so, the news broadcasts more information about their arrival.

Realizing that this may be the end, Graham decides to make the family a feast where they can have whatever they want.

And as they eat their meal (following a brief mental breakdown on Graham’s part), the TV suddenly loses reception, depicting an eerie “Emergency Broadcast Symbol” on the screen. It’s happening.

The adults do what they can to board up the rest of the house. As they do so, Graham proceeds to tell his children the stories about when they were born. When you die, memories are all you have.

The stories are constantly interrupted by the sudden banging on their house–aliens trying to enter, no doubt. Still, Graham continues with his stories, not letting fear get the best of them.

The aliens have fully surrounded the house now, with one even managing to make it inside their attic. They only have one option left: the basement.

Once they get down there, it’s pure chaos as they’re forced to listen to the footsteps of aliens running around their home, desperately trying to get to them.

As Graham attempts to comfort his traumatized, barely breathing child, we fade to black…

FINALE

The next morning, Graham awakens to find some good news. First of all, the lights are on. Merrill found some extra bulbs. Secondly, the radio broadcasters have announced that the aliens have withdrawn from Earth.

With Morgan still sick and the aliens seemingly gone, they decide to leave the basement.

Morgan, barely conscious, asks to see the TV. This is history, and even if he’s dying, he wants to be a part of it. Just as Graham sets him down and goes to grab it, he realizes that this thing isn’t over quite yet…

While all of the other creatures left the planet, they abandoned all of their sick and injured…including the one from Ray’s pantry. Once again, everything happens for a reason.

As the creature holds onto Morgan’s sick body, ready to poison him with gas, we flash back to the moment Graham arrived on the scene of his wife’s accident.

Graham walks over to speak to his dying wife, who is barely holding onto her consciousness.

We cut back to the present situation, and Colleen’s dying wishes hit Graham like a truck. He needs to see…see that everything does happen for a reason, that everything in his life was leading up to this moment, that he should have faith, and for once, to start believing the signs being shown to him. And once Graham is able to do this, it becomes time for Merrill to do his part…to swing away.

As Graham and Bo race Morgan’s body outside, Merrill proceeds to knock over every glass of water left around the house, slowly destroying the creature’s body until he’s finally dead. He races outside to meet the others.

CLOSING IMAGE

WHY IT’S GREAT

As I mentioned before, this film represents everything wonderful about the suspense genre. We are left in utter fear and discomfort for basically the entire film, and yet the aliens are only really on screen for maybe four or five pages total (no more than five minutes in the final film). Everything else was either implied, shown indirectly, or shown through the various news broadcasts. Additionally, every single page matters. As I went through this script, I found it increasingly difficult to skip over any pages of fat–mainly because there isn’t any fat. This script is only 95 pages, and it has enough material inside it to be twice that length. M. Night is a genius, this movie rules, and the script is an absolute masterclass. I absolutely recommend you give it a read.