Theme

1. Faith and Belief

It is about a viewpoint and perspective from a character that may influence the audience perception. This method forces the protagonist to face an initial skepticism where he or she has to choose to believe or not in the specific conflict between reality and silly concepts.

Signs - Graham Hess has lost his wife in a brutal car accident and this made him to abandon his faith. By remembering his late wife’s last word “swing away” and faith in his son’s health and recovery, he recommits to his belief (Fig 2.1). Plus, there’ is a scene whereby Graham comforting his brother-in-law by telling him there are two types of people in this world, the ones who choose to believe when they see, and those who believe that if they don’t see a miracle, it’s just luck.

2.1

The Village - The strong belief of the creature exists in the woods started penetrated into the villager’s mindset since they are young by the elders (Fig 2.2). They believe that their love ones will get harmed if they try to leave the village. The dilemma happens when Ivy also has the belief in love where she is willing to risk her life being harmed by the monster to get medicine for her fiancé from out of the village. There’s also a scene where blind faith appear when Ivy lays out her hand to wait Lucious despite having the fear for monster outside the house. Moreover, color red can be believed as the bad color that attracts “those we do not speak of” which is the monster.

2.2

The Happening - This whole movie did not directly tell you what to believe in and left unclarify (Fig 2.3). The male lead of the movie often get signs where it gives him idea to indicate where the poison gas comes from, for example when the wind blows from the plants. On the other hand, this movie also shows second possibility of this event actually happens because of terrorist attack, for example, the news broadcast telling the citizen about it. It left the decision for audiences to decide what they want to believe in.

2.3

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2.Family

M.Night Shyamalan movies mostly are family oriented where the films commonly starts with a character from a typical broken family. Even though it is a thriller movie like Signs and The Village but the audiences still can observe the underlying family theme.

Signs - The lost of Graham’s wife was shown in early of the movie. Graham became a widower with 2 children named Bo and Morgan together with a brother-in-law called Merrill (Fig 2.4).

2.4

The Village - The existence of this village is actually come out from the elders who had lost part of their family members who died in tragedy (Fig 2.5). Plus, the main female lead, Ivy and her younger sister Kitty lost her mother since they are young; they only have a father, which is Edward.

2.5

The Happening - Elliot, the main actor of this movie is taking care of his friend’s (Julian) daughter named Jess because Julian needs to find his wife who still unable to gather with them due to the event happening (Fig 2.6). Jess became an orphan after the death of Julian due to the “poison gas” too. There’s also a part of broken family was shown where Elliot, Jess and Alma escape to a house owned by a widow named Mrs. Jones who live alone after the death of her husband.

2.6

3.Supernatural

Supernatural films centered along supernatural elements such as ghost, gods and miracles. IT deals with the uncertainties in life. In M.Night Shyamalan’s films, contemporary supernatural plots are always utilized.

Signs - In the early of this film already show the supernatural phenomenon, which is the circle crops sign that occurred in Graham’s cornfield in daylight. The elements of supernatural continue with the appearance of aliens that seen by them in several scenes such as a green leg spotted sticking out of the corn rows, alien get broadcasted in news appearing in a birthday party in Brazil and an alien trapped in Ray’s kitchen (Fig 2.7).

2.7

The Village - The supernatural things that occur in this film is the appearance of monster in the village. For example, the monster appear outside of Ivy’s house while Ivy is laying her hand waiting for Lucious and it appears again in the scene where Ivy encounter it during the quest to find the medicine out of the village (Fig 2.8).

2.8

The Happening  - The supernatural things occur when sudden deaths keep happening (Fig 2.9). The cause of these deaths is unknown and threat to normalcy. For instance, the first scene of deaths is where a lot people are jumping from high building that makes them die. Additionally, the indefinable deaths occur in much of the scenes until the end of the movie due to the phenomenon. There’s also a miracle happen when Elliot, Alma and Jess gather outside Mrs. Jones place while strong wind is blowing but it seems like the phenomenon stopped.

2.9

4.Seeing versus Knowing

This theme can be known as an act of hook where the director holds back the information until later part of the film. It gives the audiences mind playing or illusions where the truth yet not be revealed. What you see might not what you know.

Signs - The mystery identity of Ray when he first appear outside the pizza shop gets revealed only after more than half of the film where Ray apologize to Graham inside his truck about the accident happened years ago (Fig 2.1.1).  At first Graham do not believe it is aliens but he tend to say the phenomenon was manmade but after he encounter alien in Ray’s pantry, the existence of alien is confirmed in the movie. Besides that, Ray was telling the information that aliens are afraid of water to Graham and this only was confirmed when the alien get hurt when he touched the water.

2.1.1

The Village - There’s scene where Lucious’s mother, Alice Hunt denied the request of Lucious to unveil the secret of the black wood box but the truth had been shown at the end of the film (Fig 2.1.2). Plus, the appearance of the monster at early film veiling the truth that only expose during the search of medicine by Ivy and that is actually fake monster played by Noah.

2.1.2

The Happening - Elliot a science teacher does not really believe that the phenomenon actually came from the plants that told by the nursery owner but throughout the film, Elliot starting to believe that it’s actually related to plants (Fig 2.1.3).

2.1.3