Movie Stars of the Corn.

Signs, the latest work from the fertile imagination of writer/director M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable), continues his pattern of setting fantastical stories in the most realistic of settings. This time it's rural Pennsylvania farm country whose peaceful routine is shattered by the sudden appearance of . . . crop circles.

Yes, crop circles.

Our hero is mild-mannered farmer and former man-of-God Graham Hess (Mel Gibson). He lives on a farm with his two children and his younger brother, former minor league baseball player Merrill (Joaquin Phoenix). And I don't really want to tell you anything more about the story because watching it unfold is a lot of fun — at least for a while, but I'll get to that — and I'd hate to spoil it. Let's just say that it wouldn't be much of a movie if it really were the Prichard brothers out in those fields bending the cornstalks.

The movie is wonderfully spooky at first, but ultimately frustrating. Shyamalan is a gifted filmmaker who knows how to use all the tools at his disposal to tell his story. Every aspect of the film — how shots are framed, the editing, the frantic, ominous score by James Newton Howard — is constructed to maximize suspense and infused with a sense of mounting dread that sucks the audience in. Shyamalan uses his rural setting to great effect; this is a world seen through screen doors and barn windows, where your nearest neighbor is too far away to hear you scream, where you can get lost in the choking density of your own cornfield. Behind their sturdy farmhouse doors, its residents seem awfully vulnerable.

Joaquin waited impatiently for his turn to hold the baby monitor.

Shyamalan also writes great dialogue. Characters sound like individuals, each with their own quirks and mannerisms. Plot points and characters’ backgrounds are hinted at then slowly revealed. And it’s far funnier than I thought it would be, which is an endearing trait in a spooky movie.

Finally, there are great performances, particularly by Rory Culkin and Abigail Breslin as the two sad-eyed Hess children, and Joaquin Phoenix who brings a sweetness and vulnerability to impulsive brother Merrill as well as displaying a flair for comedy I haven't seen from him before.

What doesn't work so well for me is the ending. It feels like, at some point, Shyamalan stopped thinking about the story, because after a while it just withers away. The adversaries are beaten too easily — and mostly off screen — and then it just ends. (highlight the text between the spoiler brackets if you want to read it.) [SPOILER]What starts as a frightening, believable version of how we might react to alien visitations ends as nothing much. The aliens? They’ve achieved interstellar space travel but haven’t mastered complicated crowbar technology. Scary. [END SPOILER] I was left saying, "but . . . but . . . huh? . . . is that it?" and waiting for that trademark Shyamalan twist ending that never came. (Well, there was one, sort of, but it was too mild to be truly satisfying.)

Production was delayed while Mel Gibson and Rory Culkin tried to decide how Mel would look with a beard.

If Shyamalan’s intent was to pay homage to b-horror movies of the 1950s, he succeeded. Signs has the same half-baked sensibility as those films, upgraded with a classy cast and big-ticket production values. But if he wanted to make a movie that was really on par with his earlier efforts, I think he fell short of the mark.

Here's the thing: if Signs had been made by the guys behind Independence Day, it would seem like the smartest project they’d ever done. But M. Night Shyamalan? I expect more from the guy than Time-Life "read the book" Mysteries of the Paranormal pseudo-science. It’s a shame, that all Signs’ spooky buildup falls victim to a milquetoast ending.

Gorilla Pants rating: 2.5 out of 4 bananas