I have seen Contact, and I enjoyed it. I wouldn't say the films are exactly comparable, though. Don't make me start quoting reviews of Signs, now. ;)

Let me state this for the record: I hate every movie that asshole has made. If somehow, I enjoyed one of his movies a long time ago before I knew it was by him, I take it back, and I hate it forever.

Heh... duly noted.  Your statement suggests a slight bias, you realize.  :)

For his next move he's going to be working with MTV Films and Nickelodeon Movies to write, direct, and produce a TRILOGY of films based on Avatar: The Last Airbender. Cool. Three movies in a row that I won't watch. That'll save me some time skipping shelves in video rental stores for the next couple years, and I won't accidentally pick up any movies with his name on them for a long time.

@OT, sorry uh... the reason I got into this little side-discussion rather than discuss your OP was because well... you're right. That's bullshit. Aliens smart enough to master crossing the void of space would have badass invisible ships and wouldn't need to probe human assholes and mutilate cows.

OR WOULD THEY? Whoa, that would be a crazy twist, if aliens were dumb. Like maybe... too dumb to use doorknobs, or so dumb that they invade a planet that's made of something that kills them on contact. I should send these ideas to Manoj Nelliyattu Shyamalan.

Contact would have been a lot better if the characters didn't constantly say "but enough about our movie, lets have an amateur philosophy discussion".

And though I haven't seen Lady in the Water, Signs is my least favourite M. Night Shamalianaisuanan film. Water? Seriously? It's in the god damned air!

Have you seen The Village, or The Happening? Lady In The Water is easily the worst of all his major films (by far, actually, it's total garbage), but the other two films mentioned are also considerably less well-made than Signs.

I didn't like Contact because I'm a fan of the book, and they totally raped the book!

Seen both of those. The Village is just a slow and watered down shamaliaiana twist movie, and The Happening makes the bizarre choice of leading off with the twist. Right from the get go you're led to think it's the plants, which is followed by an hour and a half of people saying "do you think it really is the plants?" "It could be the plants I guess..." But at least they were both well made movies. I quite enjoyed The Happening's atmosphere.

These films are in no way great, but Signs was downright insulting. It is funny in retrospect that mad man mel plays a priest. But that's about all the enjoyment that flick can muster.

Seriously, water!?

I just looked him up on Wikipedia now. I only saw The Sixth Sense and Signs. Hated both. Haven't heard of the Happening before. I heard nothing but bad things about The Village and Lady in the Water from everybody I know who saw them, even Shyamalan fans, along the lines of "we get it, you had a neat twist in that one movie, now shut up and finish a story without insulting your viewers and wasting 90 minutes of their time before the secret is revealed," except I hear he's getting worse and his twists are super obvious now. I heard Unbreakable was actually really good (but had a really bad ending), but I already gave up on him.

@stof, yeah, but I think that was one of the points of Contact. It shows the people who riot, the people who party, the people who think it's God, the people who think it's Hitler's magic ghost or whatever, and the intellectual turds who want to constantly have amateur philosophical discussions about it. But I can see how too much dialogue can kill the pacing.

I really liked Unbreakable, personally, and I think it's quite underrated (I don't even mind the ending). The Sixth Sense has the freshest rating of his films on the Tomatometer, with Signs in second.

As for The Happening, it's probably one of the most unusual movies I've seen. The atmosphere was so strange and surreal, I found it to be very unnerving throughout. And I mean that as a compliment. It wasn't as bad as I was expecting. It's actually his "lowest-rated" film, even lower than Lady In The Water, which is total bunk.