| “ | People break down into two groups when they experience something lucky. Group number one sees it as more than luck, more than coincidence. They see it as a sign, evidence, that there is someone up there, watching out for them. Group number two sees it as just pure luck. A happy turn of chance. I'm sure the people in group number two are looking at those 14 lights in a very suspicious way. For them, this situation is a 50-50. Could be bad, could be good. But deep down, they feel that whatever happens, they're on their own. And that... fills them with fear. Yeah, there are those people. But there's a whole lot of people in the group number one. When they see those 14 lights, they're looking at a miracle. And deep down, they feel that, whatever's going to happen, there'll be someone there to help them. And that fills them with hope. See, what you have to ask yourself is what kind of person are you? Are you the kind that sees signs, sees miracles? Or do you believe that people just get lucky? Or, look at the question this way. Is it possible that there are no coincidences? | „ |
| ~ Graham on the aliens |
Graham Hess is the main protagonist of the 2002 science fiction mystery thriller film Signs.
He was portrayed by Mel Gibson, who also played Martin Riggs in the Lethal Weapon films, Max Rockatansky in the Mad Max trilogy, William Wallace in Braveheart, Thomas Craven in Edge of Darkness, Rocky Rhodes in Chicken Run and John Smith in Pocahontas.
Overview[]
Graham is a former minister who lost his faith after his wife Colleen was killed in a car accident. He lives on a farm in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, with his two children, son Morgan and daughter Bo, and his younger brother, Merrill, a failed Minor League baseball player.
In the film[]
One day, Graham discovers huge crop circles in his cornfield, which soon appear all over the world, while strange lights appear in the sky. One night, Graham and Merrill chase a strange, dark figure out of the cornfield, and Graham sees glimpses of another figure among the corn stalks. He also hears strange clicking noises on Bo's baby monitor. He and Merrill later see footage of an alien sighting in Brazil on the local news.
Meanwhile, Ray Reddy, the man responsible for the accident that killed Caroline, calls Graham but hangs up, and later parks outside his house. Reddy begs Graham's forgiveness, which Graham neither grants nor denies, and warns him that that one of the alien creatures is trapped in his pantry. Graham goes to investigate, believing the intruder to be a teenager playing a prank, but sees a green, reptilian hand reaching for him under the door and cuts two of the creature's fingers off. The creature screams in pain and runs off.
When the aliens invade Earth, Graham fortifies the house against attack, but several aliens break in, driving the Hesses into the basement. There, Morgan has an asthma attack, and Graham helps him recover while cursing God for inflicting so much pain on him and his family.
The next morning, the aliens have fled Earth just as mysteriously as they arrived, and Graham and his family emerge from the basement. However, they discover that the alien from Reddy's pantry has been left behind in the house, and it attacks Morgan, spraying toxic pheromones in his face. Graham recalls his last conversation with his wife as she died, when she said that Merrill should "swing away" and told him to "see". Suddenly understanding, he tells Merrill to get his baseball bat and swing hard at the alien, striking it in the face. As it falls to the floor, the alien knocks over a glass of water Bo had left on a counter, which spills onto its face and kills it. Graham then realizes why the aliens had fled - they are allergic to water.
Graham takes the unconscious Morgan outside and prays that he will recover; a moment later, Morgan wakes up, as the poison had not entered his closed lungs. Graham takes it as a sign that God had given Morgan asthma just so he could survive the attack, and had allowed Caroline to die so she could give him the information he needed to defeat the alien. His faith restored, he once again becomes a minister.