On one level, Signs is about those weird crop circles that appeared in various places in the 1970s. On another level, it’s about faith and how people can find their own faith severely tested.

But first, the crop circles. Who made them? Aliens, or humans playing a prank? In the present, the same mysterious circles are appearing throughout the world, including on a farm outside Philadelphia. The owner of this farm is Graham Hess (Mel Gibson), a former priest who renounced his faith when his wife was struck and killed by a driver who fell asleep at the wheel. Graham lives on his farm with his two kids Morgan (Rory Culkin and Abigail Breslin) and his brother Merrill (Joaquin Phoenix), and they all get along right fine until one weird morning when the kids discover that part of their corn crop has been flattened – in a perfect circle.

What could this mean? Well, it’s not giving anything away to explain that the film goes the aliens-are-communicating-with-us route; but as the second layer of the film might indicate, this isn’t just about humans versus aliens, it’s about having faith that one can weather a storm.

Older son Morgan immediately jumps on the it-must-be-aliens bandwagon, and he obtains a book on UFOs at a local bookstore. Soon, wouldn’t you know it, he’s got his sister and his uncle believing aliens are here, and they’re up to no good. Morgan explains that the circles are the aliens’ way of making a map, and in due time he and his family are wearing those dopey tin-foil hats that crazy people put on to keep aliens from reading their minds.

Now, I want you to stop and reread that last part: They put on tin-foil hats so the aliens can’t read their minds. Sure, I know what you’re probably thinking – this movie’s done in a campy, 50′s sci-fi kind of way, where nothing seems terribly real, but it’s still entertaining. That would have been fine, but that’s not how this movie was presented. Every nuance, every step, everything in the movie is presented as deadly serious – even the stupid tin-foil-hat thing. People in the theater laughed when things seemed amusing, but the laughter was misplaced; there wasn’t anything terribly humorous in the entire movie.

First, let’s look at the characters. Graham is a strong, stoic type, but he dearly misses his wife (her death is needlessly recreated – sure, it had a lot to do with the issue of Graham’s faith, but it was still pointless) and probably isn’t as good of a parent as he’d like to be. His brother Merrill is a former minor-league baseball player who’s a few sandwiches short of a picnic lunch. Much is made out of Merrill’s dopiness (including a scene in which it’s revealed why Merrill is not playing major league baseball), but I’m not sure why.

Morgan and Bo are relatively interchangeable with other child characters. Morgan’s a know-it-all, pushy and obnoxious. Oh, but we’re supposed to think that has to do with his dad’s lack of faith. Or am I looking too much into it? And Bo is just the sort of cutie-pie you’d expect, complete with those gosh-aren’t-I-adorable facial and verbal expressions (you’ve no doubt seen the promos for the movie: “There’s a monster outside my bed, can I have a glass of water?).

The characters are poorly developed, and they’re not played very appealingly. Yes, I realize Graham is supposed to be a sort of hero with some notable flaws, and these flaws will be exploited at some point during the movie. And perhaps this is a movie about redemption, sure. But was it necessarily good writing to have Graham do bold, heroic things in one moment, and then be utterly clueless and indecisive in the next? And if so much was made of Merrill’s slow-wittedness, why wasn’t it capitalized on? How come he didn’t figure into the overall theme of faith more than he did?

And the kids! In one scene, they’re scared; in another, they’re almost authoratative. Both characters have less depth than an Etch-a-Sketch doodle. I kept expecting Graham to yell at them – just once – or discipline them in some way, at some point. Nope, never happened. Both actors playing the kids were a bit wooden, too – they couldn’t decide whether to deliver their lines in a flat robotic monotone or to overemphasize every other syllable.

The pacing was pretty inconsistent, too. There were scenes in the cornfield that were excellently done, typical of an M. Night Shymalan movie (he did The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, too); these scenes evoked real terror and suspense. But there were many scenes that just plain didn’t make a whole lot of sense, at least in terms of the rest of the movie. At one point, the family goes into town; almost nothing that happens there is terribly important, and what is important should have taken just a few minutes. Not so. Those scenes dragged on and on and on.

I haven’t even touched on the whole aliens aspect of the plot. Yes, there are aliens, and yes you do see them. Let me introduce Mr. Shyamalan to a new concept called special effects. Since you undoubtedly had a budget, perhaps you could have given us more than some dude in a wetsuit. I realize that the alien appearance was secondary to the real theme of the movie, but please – none of that aspect was even remotely believable.

As in the worst movies, this film had a high quotient of “Oh, come on!” moments. You know, when you’re watching a scene and can’t help but think, “Oh, come on!” These are scenes that test one’s credibility, much as Graham’s faith was tested. There were contrivances, there were red herrings, and there were serious screenwriting missteps. I lost count at how many times I said, “Oh, come on!” during the movie.

This must go down as the worst M. Night Shyamalan movie, and it also has to be one of the worst that Gibson’s done in a long time. He wasn’t right for the role, and even he couldn’t make much sense of an implausible plot surrounded by nonsequiturs and terrible pacing.

Signs: *1/2