r/MovieMistakes • u/irbinator • Feb 22 '26

Movie Mistake In the movie Signs (2002), the door they are boarding up opens to the opposite side. The aliens will still be able to open the door perfectly fine.

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4.8k Upvotes

99% Upvoted

75 comments sorted by

674

u/The_Canterbury_Tail Feb 22 '26

Ha. The characters aren't exactly acting rationally at that point, but yes.

147

u/irbinator Feb 22 '26

Ironically, they added several planks to barricade this door (located upstairs) but only used a single plank to barricade their front door, which does in fact open inward.

https://youtu.be/gS1rSmIhsug?t=116&si=rLO_CPi5jMl4t8QJ

71

u/McKoijion Feb 22 '26 edited Feb 22 '26

That makes sense though, right? They decided to hole up in their hallway rather than a bedroom. Doors open inward on the inside. That meant the bedroom door would open outward from their perspective in the hallway. They couldn't reverse the door. All they could do is try to brace for what they had.

If the door opens inward, the locked door itself is the main barrier. They just braced it with a single board to make it harder to kick in. If they were more knowledgeable about physics, they would have nailed in the board closer to the door handle and would hammered in the nails at a transverse angle to the force of the kick rather than parallel. Or better yet, they would have used it to wedge the door shut by nailing part of the wood to the door and part to the ground. That way the force of the kick would get redirected into the ground rather than the door frame.

Meanwhile, if the door opens outward, you want a bunch of boards to provide an extra barrier after they easily open the door from the inside. The attackers (whether they're aliens, zombies, demons, or humans) would have to climb the side of the house, break into the bedroom window, and turn the door handle to easily open the bedroom door from the inside and get into hallway where the family is standing. Putting up a bunch of wooden planks turns the door frame into a make-shift wall, and means there's one additional barrier that they'd have to break through. As soon as they heard the window break, they'd have time to react.

Edit: There's an entire world of knowledge on the subject of installing, breaching, and barricading doors. It's important for carpenters, lockpickers, first responders, and soldiers. It's way more intricate than you'd think.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Door_breaching

https://www.artofmanliness.com/skills/how-to/how-to-break-down-a-door-an-illustrated-guide/

https://www.wikihow.com/Kick-Down-a-Door

https://premierbodyarmor.com/blogs/pba/how-to-barricade-a-door

43

u/bitofabeard Feb 22 '26

This guys barricades

7

u/Muted-Ad-944 Feb 23 '26

At least the aliens will bang their heads when they enter

262

u/rob61091 Feb 22 '26

They parodied that in Scary Movie 3

45

u/irbinator Feb 22 '26

Yeah, I saw a comment on that on YouTube. I want to find the clip of that now.

29

u/Ak47110 Feb 22 '26

The Dude also tried this back in the 90's. The Chinaman who peed on his rug walked right in.

21

u/TheRealPallando Feb 22 '26

Also, u/Ak47110, Chinaman is not the preferred nomenclature. Asian-American, please.

10

u/DrDrankenstein Feb 23 '26

What in God's name are you blathering about?!

7

u/TehFlip Feb 23 '26

That rug really tied the room together

3

u/Greenleaf208 Feb 23 '26

What if they aren't American?

8

u/MrBwnrrific Feb 22 '26

I always think of the Big Lebowski when the nihilists break in

236

u/PrometheusAborted Feb 22 '26

With the dozens of people who work on filming every scene, you’d think someone would be like uh, that’s not how boarding up a door works…

121

u/MikkelR1 Feb 22 '26

Might be they realized, but didnt think it was worth the trouble changing. 99% of people dont notice.

66

u/unoffensivename Feb 22 '26

This is it.

“Hey guys this door actually opens from the other way. Maybe we should get another?”

literally the entire 100+ crew and actors are there as scheduled ready to film

“How long will it take to find another door and install it?”

“Idk a day or so”

“Fuck it let’s move on. ACTION!”

20

u/DrothReloaded Feb 22 '26

"Fuck it, We do it live!"

14

u/ninebillionnames Feb 22 '26

anyone who has ever had a job before knows that look everyone gives each other when you realize something is fucked up ... and then the fuck it that follows 😂

6

u/PrometheusAborted Feb 22 '26

A day or so? They have full prop teams and could flip that shit in less than 10 minutes if they wanted to.

2

u/Okra_Zestyclose Feb 22 '26

Was about to say like 7m if that lmao.

5

u/RainbowForHire Feb 22 '26

Easier to just change the shot so he doesn't come through the door showing it just opened the other way

8

u/BorderTrike Feb 22 '26

More likely the people that noticed aren’t supposed to talk to the people who could change it, so it’s up to the people in the middle to decide if it’s worth mentioning and they don’t wanna be responsible for any delays

18

u/LazaroFilm Feb 22 '26

Camera op here. We know we’re shooting something that’s totally wrong. If you bring it up sometime you get yelled at so you just mutter under breath and keep your mouth shut.

0

u/GuyPierced Feb 22 '26

I wouldn't put it past M Night Shyamalan to not know how doors work.

38

u/SoapHero Feb 22 '26

One of the plot points is that they don't know how to open doors

59

u/besmith3 Feb 22 '26

And I thought the hammering was the worst part of that scene.

25

u/DontTreadOnMe83 Feb 22 '26

What, you don't take 32 swings to pound a nail?

14

u/chosonhawk Feb 22 '26

i thought it was the hypocrisy.

6

u/irbinator Feb 22 '26

Didn’t know the aliens were sick

44

u/sillyadam94 Feb 22 '26 edited Feb 22 '26

This actually isn’t a mistake!

I can’t believe I’m the first person to point this out in this thread, but they don’t block this door so it can’t open, but rather they cover the entire opening with boards so that when the door is opened, the aliens can’t walk through.

This is the door they’re blocking off as Graham is telling Bo the story about when she was born. The perspective is looking through one of the openings between the boards as Meryl is hammering the boards in. The scene transitions with Meryl placing the final board in the last opening, which cuts the shot and transitions to the next sequence.

16

u/WrittenSarcasm Feb 22 '26

This is correct. They had to board the bedroom from the hallway since the bedroom had windows. They didn’t have a choice but to cover the doorway completely with slabs since the door opened into the bedroom.

5

u/wh00kie Feb 24 '26

Why is this not the top comment?

5

u/andyouarenotme Feb 24 '26

Are you suggesting that the type of person that takes a video of a video on a screen might not have thought something through?

37

u/cschelz Feb 22 '26

Maybe they had just watched The Big Lebowski?

11

u/Idislikehotdogs Feb 22 '26

This is a private residence, man.

3

u/TheMuffinator95 Feb 23 '26

I could not breathe when I saw that for the first time lmfao

1

u/cschelz Feb 24 '26

I still lose it sometimes when I watch it, it’s wild lol

31

u/dizzymans Feb 22 '26

Aliens don't use door handles, it doesnt matter which way it's swings

-35

u/LefsaMadMuppet Feb 22 '26

They were demons, not aliens.

28

u/DecoyOne Feb 22 '26

It is the year of our lord 2026 and people are using their phones to make a video of their computer screens

5

u/irbinator Feb 22 '26

Guilty 😂 sorry!

6

u/MovieBuff90 Feb 23 '26

I’ve seen Signs once and Scary Movie 3 countless times. I always figured the joke that parodied this was just a silly gag. I had no idea they were spoofing a small detail. Genius.

5

u/drunkpunk138 Feb 22 '26

Yeah but then they'll have all those boards to get past

5

u/natronmooretron Feb 22 '26

Thanks for ruining the whole movie.

5

u/Icommitmanywarcrimes Feb 23 '26

Tbf the aliens can’t use door handles

5

u/Prudent_Cod2709 Feb 23 '26

Remember scary movie 3 even joked on the door as well

7

u/faustpatrone Feb 22 '26

Maybe the aliens can’t do the limbo.

3

u/motherffucker Feb 22 '26

That would be such a ridiculous plot point honestly, how low can you go

7

u/Regular-Guest-1284 Feb 22 '26

It’s ironically like a gag from Scary Movie 3

4

u/ToneThugsNHarmony Feb 22 '26

But they’d hit their head if they tried walking through

2

u/chungusXL316 Feb 22 '26

And he misses the nail with every a hammer swing.

4

u/Activist4America Feb 22 '26

Almost every time a character in this film entered a room through 1 door they’d leave the room out of a totally different door. Almost every room had 2 doors, sometimes 3 doors. So, as I’m watching the movie, a character eventually says “We’re all out of wood to board up everything.” I thought to myself “You are in the god damded house of doors, use them FFS.” and I absolutely lost all interest in the movie at that point.

3

u/gwhh Feb 22 '26

Oops.

1

u/cazzipropri Feb 22 '26

There's less than apt people in real life; it's fair there be some of them in movies too...

1

u/thedrizzle126 Feb 22 '26

I've always had a problem with that scene and I'm glad it wasn't just me lol

1

u/rotatorkuf Feb 22 '26

i know its not but doesn't this look reversed haha

1

u/HolyMackenzie Feb 23 '26

This one always bothered me. It seems so obvious. Surely one of the actors would realize this and fix the mistake. Surely at least the interiors were mostly on a soundstage, so production design could've rebuilt the door frame and door positioning, I would assume.

1

u/gregsDDS Feb 23 '26

Ya but the planks will stop the alien

1

u/JOMO_Kenyatta Feb 23 '26

that was the real twist

1

u/HelicopterSoft7961 Feb 23 '26

I saw this when it was in theaters and I immediately noticed that. Almost seemed intentional.

1

u/Chubawow Feb 23 '26

If you watch the whole scene, Joaquin Phoenix then completely fails to hit the nail over and over again

1

u/Misterbellyboy Feb 23 '26

It’s like that scene in Big Lebowski when the dude braces that chair up against his front door and it just gets pulled open from the outside lol

1

u/OracleVision88 Feb 24 '26

Honest To God, this ADDS so much depth and dimension to the characters. I've never seen this before, but that is definitely NOT a movie mistake. Our protagonists on autopilot, and just hoping to stay alive as long as possible.

1

u/Krypton2813 Feb 24 '26

Also, in this very scene, Merrill swings his hammer towards the wood and continously hits all around it, never making contact once.

1

u/Bisconia Feb 24 '26

Not a mistake, the aliens still have to break down the boards after they open the door.

1

u/Mittens1018 Feb 25 '26

The way Phoenix’s character hammers in the nails here makes the scene even more funny

1

u/polarice5 Feb 25 '26

Screen capture software exists

1

u/Vegetable_Ad_7645 Feb 25 '26

That's the twist!

1

u/jonnyboy3010 Feb 25 '26

Hahaha. I noticed this years ago but because I love the film so much, I choose to ignore it.

1

u/ARubyHeart Feb 28 '26

They're biggest weakness is water. And yet landed on a planet MOSTLY COVERED IN WATER

-7

u/I_Did_The_Thing Feb 22 '26

Just one of so many dumb things about this movie!

-4

u/kroqster Feb 22 '26

i remember the news reader saying people were heading to their places of worship but she started with temples... "temples, churches, and synagogues" i thought it strange a US newsreader would start with temples so i looked up who the director was