Signs
Main article: Signs (film)
Opening in August 2002, Signs is a science fiction drama of a rural Pennsylvania pastor (Mel Gibson) who has lost his faith after his wife's death and regains it with his family as they witness the worldwide events of an alien invasion. Joaquin Phoenix, Rory Culkin, and Abigail Breslin also star. Budgeted at $72 million, Signs grossed $227 million domestically and $408 million worldwide. It was the highest-grossing film as well as the highest opening-weekend gross ($60 million) of Gibson's career as an actor.

The film received a generally positive reception. Most notably of which was Roger Ebert's four-star review, stating, "M. Night Shyamalan's Signs is the work of a born filmmaker, able to summon apprehension out of thin air. When it is over, we think not how little has been decided, but how much has been experienced".

Shyamalan said in an interview with Science Fiction Weekly that his choice of Gibson was based in part by the actor's emotional role in the film Lethal Weapon: "I was on my parents' sofa watching the video of Lethal Weapon, and then this guy did stuff emotionally that had no business being in an action movie. ... I completely believed the humanity of a man who was so torn by the loss of his wife that he wasn't afraid of dying, which made him a lethal weapon. ... When I wrote the movie about a guy who loses faith because his wife has passed away, I felt like that was the guy. And I also like taking an action guy and not letting him be The Guy."

Shyamalan also said that originally, there was going to be very little music in the film, but that composer James Newton Howard's intense and emotional compositions reminded him of a Bernard Herrmann (Alfred Hitchcock's frequent composer) score and prompted him to change his mind.