Customer Reviews

The Signal [Blu-ray]

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

"The Signal" is the work of natural independent filmmakers, and it shows because they focus on actual storytelling instead of unimportant details. You watch it without analyzing anything--you just let the story happen, and you take it for almost everything it's worth. The surprising thing is that it achieves all this despite being a supernatural thriller, a genre notorious for trying to explain everything; here's a story that explains virtually nothing yet still manages to be both understandable and frightening. The basic idea seems unnerving enough, if a little too reminiscent of Stephen King's "Cell": in the fictional city of Terminus (whose very name must be symbolic), a signal sent through television sets on New Year's Eve makes anyone watching it irrational, paranoid, psychotic, and homicidal. This signal, wherever it came from, distorts perceptions of reality and makes the victim see things that aren't there and understand things that make no sense. As a result, people kill each other left and right for no apparent reason. They have The Crazy in their heads.

In the midst of this chaos are three main characters caught in a bizarre love triangle, and this is fitting since the film is divided into three distinct sections, or in this case, transmissions. The first, called "Crazy in Love," introduces us to Mya (Anessa Ramsey) and Ben (Justin Welborn), who are secretly having an affair. Ben awakens in the middle of the night and notices his TV, which he thought had been turned off; not only is it on, the screen shows nothing but patterned white static, as well. Then Mya awakens, and when she realizes what time it is, she hurriedly dresses and heads for home. She knows something's wrong as soon as she enters the building because almost everyone is awake, and they argue with one another as they wander the halls. When she enters her apartment, she first sees two of her husband's friends struggling to fix the TV's reception (they want to watch the baseball game). She then faces her husband, Lewis (AJ Brown), and at that point, we immediately know two things: (1) Lewis has already been affected by the signal; (2) his need to domineer was amplified--but not created--by the signal.

The second transmission is called "The Jealously Monster," and it's the weakest because it relies on quirky comedy instead of subtler moments of satire. This is when we meet Anna (Cheri Christian), and we immediately see that she has killed her husband. We also see that she's disappointed over not being able to throw a New Year's Eve party; as her husband's body sits across from her, she tells him that, when the guests arrive, she'll just tell them to leave. Her neighbor, Clark (Scott Poythress), stops by before long, as does Lewis, who uses his profession as an exterminator as an excuse to enter. Lewis is now on a mission to recapture his wife, a mission so obsessive that he doesn't trust anyone. He also sees Mya in place of Anna and kills almost anyone who comes near her. Even when he realizes who's who, he remains convinced that Anna knows where Mya has gone. He also has a powerful influence over Clark, who shifts between understanding the signal and being its unwilling pawn.

The third segment is called "Escape from Terminus," and if you think that title gives away the ending, you've got another thing coming. This segment wisely veers away from intentional humor, focusing once again on the desperate situation the characters are in. There are two notable exceptions, and while I won't describe them in detail, I will say that one involves aluminum foil and the other involves a severed head. By now, Clark and Ben are trying to intercept Mya before Lewis can, which will be difficult since all three men have been affected by the signal to a certain degree. It's really a question of will power, of knowing what to focus on and how to push irrational thoughts aside. Clark and Ben theorize that the signal is a kind of programmer, sending messages that trick the brain into believing what it shouldn't believe. It's pretty likely that this is a social commentary on television in general. Let's look at the obvious example of reality shows: they influence viewers into a primal state of competition, encouraging votes for the best singer, or the best dancer, or the best model.

It's also pretty likely that the film is a commentary on the state of humanity in general. Consider the fact that it opens with footage of a schlocky exploitation film, much like Wes Craven's "Last House on the Left": we slowly begin to realize that the needless violence of that footage is being echoed in the plot of "The Signal," with numerous, brutal murders that are justified only in the minds of the Crazies. The only way this film departs from films like "Last House on the Left" is that it focuses more on the aftermath than on the actual killing. Yes, violent deaths are featured, but we see more spilt blood than blood being spilt, if you get my drift. I suspect that the three writers and directors--David Bruckner, Dan Bush, and Jacob Gentry--did this on purpose, which is fine by me; lingering shots of blood and gore may be fun to look at, but they don't really add much as far as the story is concerned. But story is exactly what "The Signal" focuses on, making for one of the more original thrillers of recent memory. Instead of going for obvious, cheap thrills, it's ambitious enough to be unnerving and unpredictable. That's exactly the way a supernatural thriller should be, even with the occasional lapse into unnecessary comedy.

On New Year's Eve 2007, regular programming has been indefinitely interrupted.

A signal is being transmitted to every TV, cell phone, and radio. This transmission has a powerful effect on anyone who watches it or listens to it. It strips away self-control, plays on your paranoia, and makes even the most brutal of murders appear rational. Three people--a wife, a husband and a lover--all deal with this feral disorder in three, very different ways. This film brilliantly and brutally tells each of their stories. After the various transmissions of The Signal, chaos, murder, and mayhem ensue.

Usually, when you are about to watch a low-budget horror movie, your excited anticipation at watching a new horror flick is very often marred by a bit of dread. Almost invariably, the viewer is going to have to overlook bad acting, stilted dialogue, and clichéd plot twists. Unfortunately, these pitfalls have come to be synonymous with moderately-financed movies. Having said this, now and again, a movie comes along which changes your mind about low-budget filmmaking. The Signal is one such movie, the acting is superb, the writing is innovative and compelling, and the dialogue delivers many a quotable line:

"Do you have `the Crazy?'"
Transmission 1 - Crazy in Love, directed by David Bruckner.
This part of the film tells us the story of Mya, the wife, and her story becomes, by far, the darkest part of the tale. This section is shot in such a way that it has a voyeuristic quality to it. The viewer does not feel as if they are watching a film, but rather, that they are observing Mya, as the initial effects of The Signal are startlingly revealed.

"You're not my husband, you're a homicidal maniac."
Transmission 2 - Jealousy Monster, directed by Jacob Gentry.
This is the most surreal part of the film, as we see the world through Lewis's eyes. Of course, he is the jealous husband and is most obviously affected by The Signal. Gentry's transcendent use of nonlinear storytelling, along with his dark humour, gives us a gruesome glimpse into the mind of a maniac. And, even though Lewis has a habit of killing people by battering them to death with a fire extinguisher, you do, kinda, feel for the guy.

"You are aware that you are having a conversation with a decapitated head."
Transmission 3 - Escape from Terminus, directed by Dan Bush.
And, finally, there is Dan's story, aka the Lover. In the final transmission, the line between good and evil becomes the most blurred that it has been since the start of the film. This epilogue hammers the message home, that no one is safe from The Signal. Viewers find themselves asking, "Who is the bad guy, who is the husband, who is the lover, who is dead, and who is alive? To all these questions, there is no definitive answer. The optimists among us will interpret the ending as a "love conquers all, kind-of," deal. And, cynics will view it as just the beginning of the last, great apocalypse, one in which man's inherent fears and paranoias, with a little help from some malevolent technology, will destroy all humankind. Transmission 3 is a very suitable, ambiguous ending to a first-rate horror film.

Each transmission has a very different style, and some viewers may think this adds up to a disjointed narrative. However, I wholeheartedly disagree with this conclusion. As each story is told from a different perspective, it makes sense that the filmmakers should employ different techniques to portray their characters' personalities and varying descents into madness.

The Signal is the most original, thought-provoking horror movie of the past decade. This film is wickedly witty and pleasingly perverse. Its writers and directors are very adept at their craft, and this film is a shining example of its genre, regardless of budget. In short, The Signal is a sublime example of filmmaking and is worthy of major distribution.

The three segments were directed by three different people, and the shifting gears are very, very noticeable. The first segment is violent and disturbing without much humor, followed by a second act which becomes broadly (although darkly) comic and then shifts sharply back to disturbing and violent, and the tone of the third segment is back to more or less straight horror/apocalypse.

I thought the uncertainty about who is affected by the Signal and who is not, and the fact that different characters are affected to different degrees, was a very interesting direction and adds a lot of paranoia to an already paranoid situation.

Overall, this had a fresh and creative feel, and was well worth watching. Do watch the extra vignettes that were shot for the DVD, portraying some scenes that occur at other locations in Terminus, not involving the characters of the main film. They are more in the darkly comic vein, particularly the scene with the husband, wife, and children in a minivan.

(No Spoilers!) The Signal. Hmm, The Signal? I personally went into this movie knowing basicaly nothing about it and sometimes it's good to go into movies like this with a big "?" in your head. For the good first 15-25 minutes, you're going to be like "what is going on here", it makes you want to keep watching to find out what happens next.

Now how would I describe "The Signal, well, in a nutshell, the Signal is "a disapperance from the real world in your mind in a crazy, psychotic kind of way and no way to get out of it." You go into the eyes of these characters with something infecting their brain without knowing the real cause, making them all basically "immorally out of control."

It's defintely a nutjob from the start and you can't help to say "this is the weirdest thing I've ever seen" will defintely be pulsating through your mind watching this very peculiar film. Without getting into detail about the plot, and without giving things away, just know this film messes with the viewers head. And for the most part, it succeeds. You can say it's along the lines of the bombardment of the "zombie" genre we've perhaps heard of or seen before, But "The Signal" is nothing like say" a "Dawn of the Dead", it's not even close.

In a more psychological fashion, The Signal puts the viewer in the minds of these people with their now contaminated minds. From start to finish you wonder where the movie takes you but unfortunately, it doesn't give a satisfactory ending for the viewer. So yes, it leaves you severely hanging, with no explanations, no answers for the terrible things going on in this city and why this was happening to these once normal people. Dont' get me wrong, a lot of the movie is very well done and certainly watchable for fans of violence in general. Very good special effects, decent, yet sometimes obscure musical score, and the fine acting is also worth a valuable mention, but the plot just doesn't mesh as well with everything else going right in the movie. One of the main issues is the lack of locales you have to sit through. The film keeps in you in a seemlingly clostrophobic state by keeping you compressed to a measly 2 apartment complexes during the entire length of the film, which drove me nuts after the first hour. I wanted to move on to the next setting, but it just never takes off. You, the viewer, feel so confined to these sometimes boring environments, it makes you ache for more answers on what else is going on out there, but keeps you confined to the lead characters and nobody else.

Lame locations, a bit of a slow start and unanswered questions will leave you wanting a sequel and who knows, the story makes it easy for more to come, so. The actors work hard to keep you enteratined and the violence is painstakingly realistic, but I still left the movie feeling "close to being a great movie, but no cigar".

Its hard to decribe a movie so thought provoking, creative, intelligent and beautiful. The music is beautifully written and thrown into each scene flawlessly so that you can get a perfect feel of what the characters were experiencing throughout the story. Definitely a heart and mind trip. Watch the signal, and you will know what I mean.

Well, here's a well hyped film that starts out promising and actually ends pretty well yet fails miserably in the middle (but for reasons you wouldn't think). Unfortunately this is a result of a middle which doesn't fit with the rest of the film causing this flick to be, though a nice little horror film, a failure.

The film is a take on the zombie genre but twists it with a very original spin (unless you're Stephen King). Rather than having folks being infected by a virus or folks that have risen from the dead, we have a signal (similar to white noise) that one night comes across the television turning folks into crazies, disturbed, or simply brain dead (think of Stephen King's novel Cell but with a television rather than a cellphone). So though some folks turn into harmless nuts, a great many become violent murderers or hallucinatory crazies dangerous to others and themselves.

The film is broken into three segments, all directed by different people but all tied together with the same characters and focused mainly around the main couple, two folks that are a meeting-and-cheating couple (so right away you aren't cheering for them to live).

Within the first segment we get a true classic horror film, similar to the intense moments one would see from such legends as Tobe Hooper, John Carpenter, George Romero, and Wes Craven. The sudden shocks of people slowly snapping mentally after being exposed to the signal was simply brilliant. And the mayhem that follows is some of the best suspense moments never mind horror moments in recent memory. This piece of the film is truly a throwback of the grainy, melancholic, and agitating classics of heyday; basically the type of film Rob Zombie would love to make.

Skipping to the third segment, this again brings back the great heyday of classic horror. This segment does not match up with the first mostly due to the screenwriting, but it is worthy of mentioning as being "well done" horror. Since it ties up the story somewhat, the screenwriting focuses more on this rather than allowing the director the dynamic approach and story flow of the first segment.

The second segment is the problem. Okay, first I'd like to say this was well done all around. The acting was absolutely great, the direction was splendid, and what it was trying to do (horror-comedy) worked. But with all this, suddenly the whole tone of the film changed! The problem is that it just doesn't fit into the bookend segments. And it drags on much too much especially after the kinetic first segment which though no shorter, flew by with its intensity.

So, here is a film that generally is well done, but the "experiment" of three different directors doing three different segments turns a film with potential into a mixed bag. Totally unfortunate. The screenplay seems to have been written for this in mind rather than to produce a flowing, intense, horror film.

For the DVD, all the extras are excellent and are all worth viewing and listening to.

Directed by David Bruckner, Dan Bush, and Jacob Gentry

The Signal received a fair number of critical accolades before its theatrical release. But if there is one thing I've learned about highly touted horror flicks, it is to keep an open mind no matter what other people say. The genre has many sub-categories, and some fans don't cross over. One fan's delight is another's five dollar trade-in value.

This technically expert study of mass violence is divided into a three-part structure with a different writer for each segment or transmission:

Trans 1.0
Crazy Love
written by David Bruckner
A married woman says good night to her lover and leaves him distractedly watching TV, while a signal keeps jamming the picture, reducing it to a flashing kaleidoscope. The woman returns home to her suspicious, TV-viewing husband, who is involved in an argument that will soon escalate.

Trans 2.0
The Jealousy Monster
written by Jacob Gentry
The characters from the first segment intersect with their neighbors down the street. The neighbors have been preparing a New Year's Eve party, unaware that violence has erupted outside. Some characters realize what is happening, and others are in denial.

Trans 3.0
written by Dan Bush
Escape from Terminus
Characters from both previous segments try to outwit one another--and separate reality from their delusions--long enough to make their way out of town.

In theoretical terms, the structure is interesting. New and strange twists of fate might occur with different artists creating portions of the narrative. But forty-five minutes in, horror lapses uneasily into farce, in Trans 2.0, and leaves the blood-stained surviving characters washed up in a mundane setting.

After fumbling through a bunch of brutal, domestic misunderstandings, all is well. That is, we finally get back to the action. But the film never regains its original momentum.

In the absence of that momentum, I fall back on petty gripes:

Gripe 1.1
The heroine is slow-acting to the point of being catatonic. OK, she's traumatized. But more internal stress, and more external movement, would have been more fun to watch. To be fair, none of the characters act quickly on instinct. They seem anesthetized by shock, which (again) is a better idea in theory than practice.

Gripe 2.1
The description on the DVD cover and online says that a mysterious transmission is invading every cell phone, radio, and TV. But in the main story line we only see it transmitted via TV.

Gripe 3.1
A lot of the people who receive the signal do not become violent and we never learn why some people do and some do not.

Gripe 3.1a
To understand the effect of the signal, we need one example, but the film offers one after another, without adding anything each time. The characters hallucinate, but their visions seem limited by their lack of imagination. Good idea, not that compelling to watch.

SPOILER WARNING

Gripe 3.1b
Allowing for the real possibility that I'm just too stupid to get the whole thing, I don't see any reason to have an imagined, false ending if you're not going to change it the second time around. What if Brazil came back to the starting point for the last scene again, and then offered no indication that the story would go in a different direction? It made me wonder, but not for long. When the film was over, I had finished thinking about it.

The Signal is pretty evenly divided among several characters. Each section has its humorous and engaging moments, but over-all the story suffers from the lack of a central protagonist. It wavers between social satire and love story, and never reveals enough about any one character to make their survival matter.

The DVD offers deleted scenes as well as extra transmissions, which are complete sequences taking place in other parts of the city while the main action occurs. If you want to view the story as an active landscape in which many dramas happen simultaneously, the extra transmissions add depth and complexity to the picture. But if you want to identify with someone, and if you're looking for dramatic tension in the narrative, the extras won't help.

This was a very fast moving film and it had a lot of black comedy elements in it, as well as a very good cast. The budget is very minimal but they really create some great scenes of tension.

The basic story revolves around a Signal that goes out to all of the people that are watching television and it turns them into flesh eating zombies. All havoc breaks loose in communities all over the world and you jump right into the action from the beginning of the movie.

There are a lot of visual gags in the film and it does contain quite a bit of gore but not so much that it takes away from the action onscreen. When you have zombies you have to expect some blood and guts and you do get a fair share. I really liked this particular flick because it did something different with the zombie genre and it is more than just a horror film about zombies it also has some social commentary in it as well.

This is definitely worth checking out especially for fans of the zombie genre who are tired of the same old zombie movies over and over! Dare I say an intelligent zombie film.

Right off the bat, EVERY ONE'S GOTTA SEE THIS!!! This's gotta be one of the best independent horror flicks that I've seen in a loooooong time. The plot in a nut shell (as not to give away too much) is basically about a mysterious "signal" broadcast over television, phone, radio, etc, etc that turns anyone who watches or listens into paranoid homocidal nuts. This is truely a well acted, frightening flick (props to the director)that'll have you at the edge of your seat through out the entire film. The other thing I loved about the movie is that as scary as the movie is, it's hilarious at the same time. I was literally laughing out loud one minute & then terrified the next. The movie shows you the perspective of the crazies & it's great. For all you gore hounds out there the movie lets the red stuff flow liberally, so no fear there (and it's not the amatuer kool-aid stuff you see in most low budget horror flicks today). For anyone that's ever enjoyed goofy/gorey horror flicks, you'll wanna check this one out ("Evil Dead 2" anyone?), I'm absolutely adding this one to my collection & I think you should too. BUY THIS MOVIE!!!

"The Signal" is a breath of fresh air for the horror fan. It seems like Hollywood is so intent on remaking almost any 1980's horror film, or Americanizing that latest Japenese Ghost story, originality has been pushed to the backburner. "The Signal" stands out not only with a pretty original story (I was expecting a rip-off of Stephen King's "Cell" novel, but any similarity is only a passing one), it's filmed in a unique way, and is presented in a fun format. Basically, take some of the elements of "28 Days Later", mix in some "Pulp Fiction", and add large doses of "Shaun of the Dead" type humor and you have "The Signal". The gore level and special effects will satisfy the gore hound, with beheadings, head smashes, and a great scene involving an arm getting screwed to the wall!! But don't let the gore be a turn-off for you if you are not into the red stuff. For all of the gory scenes there are quite a few that will have you laughing out loud. The film makers seem to have struck a perfect balance with "The Signal".

I strongly caution you to be wary of some of the reveiws posted here that provide spoilers. I had no idea what this film was about, just popped it and sat back for the ride. It's a truly "fun" horror film, that will have you chuckling one moment and cringing the next. Well worth the price to own.