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M. Night Shyamalan is an interesting director who took a turn toward mediocrity somewhere around The Village or perhaps Lady In the Water. And while The Happening seems to be a step in the right direction, only a movie like Signs is able to remind you why he was so well-thought-of to begin with.

A solid realization of his filmic themes of isolation and paranoia, Signs is a classic film featuring a pre-Passion of the Christ Mel Gibson and a pre-Walk the Line Joaquin Phoenix in a movie aimed directly at the Art Bell conspiracy crowd and presupposes, in a War of the Worlds-style vein, what it might be like if crop circles really were a precursor of an alien invasion. The movie did well enough when released in the wake of September 11 that it grossed enough to enable the cast to afford Outer Banks rentals.

The Blu-Ray format restores some of the big-screen detail to the movie that got lost in translation to the small-screen, standard-resolution TV format when the flick first appeared on DVD. There are, unfortunately, no new extras in this package, but the standard extras that came with the original DVD are present in this Blu-Ray package as well.

The quality of the transfer is quite good and displays with no noticeable issues; my biggest problem with the presentation is that the flick features one of those annoying “downloading is stealing” ads that are so unnecessary, since, if you were downloading the movie, you’d never see the ad to begin with. Whatever.

One of the main underlying themes of Signs is the theme of faith; how the graphic and tragic death of his wife draws Mel Gibson’s character away from his faith, while the invasion improbably restores it. I say improbably because you have to see the entire movie, including the somewhat surprising resolution, to really appreciate how an alien invasion could restore faith to a Bible-preaching pastor.

One of Mad Mel’s more understated performances in years, M. Night Shyamalan drew greatness out of his cast and prepared Joaquin Phoenix for the next phase of his career on his rise to stardom. The film is a classic suspense flick and has held up well since it debuted in 2001. Worth owning, despite sporting no new extra features.

One of the most boring “thrillers” of the 1980s is now on DVD. Please, hold your yawns until the end of the review. For a film that supposedly sparked a complete movement, the French cinéma du look of the 1980s, Diva is an excessively boring spy/suspense film that takes forever to get started and never really takes off.

The plot is thin, disconnected stuff; a young guy named Jules is obsessed with an opera singer named Cynthia Hawkins and takes some video of her at a recital; however, he later takes some video of a crime in progress and is eventually sought by both the police and the bad guys. Believe me, the plot sounds more interesting than the film actually is.

The cinéma du look movement was all about noir-style crime plots in fairy tale settings and were not concerned much with any resemblance to realism. While the movement gave birth eventually to more interesting directors and films, Jean-Jacques Beineix’s DIVA is not among them; it was the director’s first film and feels extremely dated; it’s about as interesting to look at for a couple hours as a showcase of medical jewelry.

While some elite connoisseurs of French film may enjoy it, DIVA was essentially wasted time that this reviewer will never get back. Ponderous, boring and generally unpleasant, DIVA is one film I wouldn’t have missed had it never appeared on DVD.

Hostel and Saw have popularized a new subgenre of horror; the stark torture film. Yet if anyone thinks this genre is limited to America, think again. Frontier(s) is a French import with English subtitles that mimics the basic formula of films like Hostel to a “T,” as well as paying tribute to the subgenres’ progenitors, such as Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

The film begins with a massive political riot going on in Paris, from which a group of five revolutionaries attempt to flee. Rather than taking advantage of some nice overseas cruise deals, the instead flee the city in two separate cars.

Our focus is immediately drawn to the lone female revolutionary, Yasmine, whose brother was mortally wounded in their flight from the site of the riots; she leaves him to an uncertain fate in an emergency room, narrowly avoiding capture, and then continues fleeing from Paris.

We then jump to the other car, which contains two guys, one of whom made Yasmine pregnant but has decided to dump her anyway. They arrive at a small rural hotel (shades of Psycho) where a strange pair of women seem intent on seducing them rather than merely putting them up for the night. Instead, the men are separated and one is immediately killed while the other is strung up like a slab of meat in a human butchery.

Yup, it’s cannibalism central, folks, and these freaks like their meat in whatever state extended torture puts it in, rather than finely cared for. Oh well, if you’re willing to eat human flesh, I guess there’s not much room left for kosher butchery standards to be observed, is there?

That all happens in the first 15 minutes or so, so don’t worry about me giving away too much of what passes for a plot in this excruciatingly gory and largely cliché and boring torture-horror film. While the movie is an entry in After Dark’s Horrorfest “8 Films to Die For” collection, this one is hardly a stellar example of suspense-style horror and instead just subsists on a diet of shock-n-aweful.

There are very few watchable films in this disturbing and dark subgenre, but Frontier(s) is hardly one of the few that are watchable. There’s mercifully not much in the way of special features, either. Avoid it like the plague.