Starring Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix, the story focuses on a former Episcopal priest named Graham Hess who discovers a series of crop circles in his cornfield and that the phenomenon is a result of extraterrestrial life.

The original motion picture soundtrack, which was composed by James Newton Howard, was released on the opening day by the Hollywood Records label.

Former Episcopal priest Graham Hess lives on a rural farm in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, with his asthmatic preteen son, Morgan, and young daughter, Bo.

The scenes of the house and cornfield were shot inside the campus of Delaware Valley University, an agricultural college, where they had 40 acres (16 ha) of land to use.

William Ruhlmann of Allmusic stated in his review that: With Signs, composer James Newton Howard again joins director M. Night Shyamalan for their third collaboration following The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, and clearly the film presents another thrilling encounter with the supernatural.

He overloads his lower tones, employing eight basses, five percussionists, and even a tuba, but also uses a large string section for short, fast, repetitive figures meant to keep viewers on the edges of their seats.

This is not particularly imaginative music, just good old Saturday afternoon scary movie fare, the only distinguishing characteristic about it – consistent with Shyamalan's style – that it is so relentless.

There's just no let up; dread pervades every moment of the director's films, to the point of emotional exhaustion for some, and the score has to have the same uncompromising approach, which can make it a little hard to take when listened to all the way through.

The site's critical consensus reads: "With Signs, Shyamalan proves once again an expert at building suspense and giving audiences the chills.

[17] Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars, writing: "M. Night Shyamalan's Signs is the work of a born filmmaker, able to summon apprehension out of thin air.

"[19] Nell Minow of Common Sense Media gave the film four out of five stars; she praised the casting and Shyamalan's direction, saying his "only flaw was not leaving anything to the audience's imagination".

"[21] Variety's Todd McCarthy criticized the film for its lack of originality, writing: "After the overwrought Unbreakable and now the meager Signs, it's fair to speculate whether Shyamalan's persistence in replicating the otherworldly formula of The Sixth Sense might not be a futile and self-defeating exercise.

Scott of The New York Times wrote that "Mr. Shyamalan is undone by his pretensions" and that the theme of paternal grief "is articulated here with a heavy-handed, incoherent sentimentality that smothers real emotion."

On the theme of faith, he concludes: "Mr. Shyamalan never gives us anything to believe in, other than his own power to solve problems of his own posing, and his command of a narrative logic is as circular – and as empty – as those bare patches out in the cornfield.

[26] It was the biggest opening weekend of Mel Gibson's career, surpassing Ransom, and earned more than Disney's previous best for a live-action non-sequel, not based on existing popular source material, held by Pearl Harbor.