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"The Signal [Blu-ray]" Overview

It s New Year s Eve in the city of Terminus and chaos is this year s resolution. All forms of communication have been jammed by an enigmatic transmission that preys on fear and desire driving everyone in the city to murder and madness. In a place once marked by conformity but now sent into complete anarchy the rebellious Ben must save the woman he loves from the bedlam in the streets as well as her crazed sadistic husband. But the only way he can tell who to trust or who has given in to violence is by uncovering the true nature of The Signal.Told in three parts from three unique perspectives by three visionary directors The Signal was originally conceived as an experimental film project called Exquisite Corpse where one filmmaker would begin a story then hand it off to another filmmaker to continue and then to another and so on until the movie was complete. The story eventually took shape and evolved into a scifi/ horror/thriller that imagines a world where everyday anxieties become the catalyst for inhuman terror. The Signal is a horrific journey towards discovering that the most brutal monster might actually be within all of us.System Requirements:Running Time: 103 minutesFormat: BLU-RAY DISC Genre: HORROR/SUPERNATURAL Rating: R UPC: 876964001373 Manufacturer No: 10137

"The Signal [Blu-ray]" Specifications

The Signal proves once again budget restraints prove no barrier to ingenuity: this scruffy, rough-around-the-edges horror film has a strong central idea and a habit of jolting you with real shocks. Something in TV and radio transmissions is getting into the brains of ordinary people and turning them into homicidal maniacs--something other than the usual homicide-inducing stuff, that is. (Incidentally, this movie was shot before the arrival of Stephen King's novel Cell, which has a similar idea.) We learn the concept in a nerve-slicing opening act, as a young woman (Anessa Ramsey) leaves her extramarital fling (Justin Welborn) to tell her husband she's splitting. Unfortunately, this is the moment a mysterious signal has infiltrated TV transmissions and cell phones, turning most of humanity, or at least the people living in the city of Terminus, into murderous savages. Serves them right for living in a city called Terminus. Why some people get "the Crazy" and some people don't is one of the problems with the film--horror movies generally rely in certain rules to carry them through--although the biggest issue viewers might have is the hodgepodgey style. Three Atlanta-based directors, David Bruckner, Jacob Gentry, and Dan Bush, helmed the three distinct sections of the movie; thus the exciting opening is followed by a jarringly comic second act, and wrapped by a somewhat bleak finale. There's enough invention here to justify the film for genre buffs, despite the nagging feeling that it doesn't quite hold together. --Robert Horton

Customer Reviews

disappointing is the key word here - B. E Jackson - Pennsylvania
Wow, am I *really* disappointed with the Signal. What starts out like it's going to be a REALLY freaky horror film completely falls flat after 30 minutes when the storyline takes a 180 and never returns to the horror elements that made it work so wonderfully in the beginning.

In the beginning you see a woman sleeping with a guy and cheating on her husband. Before walking through the door of her apartment building to return home to her husband, she sees a bunch of people roaming the halls of the apartment building in which she lives.

So far, so good.

When she walks inside her room, she sees her husbands friends trying to fix a strange signal that appears on a TV screen.

She questions what the heck is going on in the hallways outside that is making everyone act crazy. So far I'm *loving* the storyline. At this point I get the feeling the atmosphere is going to be suspenseful similar to how so many successful zombie films work.

The husband basically forces his wife to the back bedroom where he questions her hard and heavy. He asks where she was, who she was with, etc. She tells him she was with friends, but well... we all know she was cheating on her husband with a guy.

Then a conflict develops between the husband and one of their roommates. You see, the roommate was swinging a baseball bat around chaotically, and while doing so he almost hit the guys wife. This upset the husband VERY much to the point that the husband told his wife to go get a shower.

Well upon opening the bathroom door, she sees her husband beating the poor guy to death with his very own baseball bat. She gets extremely upset. This leads to her leaving the room and running around the hallways looking for a way to escape.

Then down the hall, while trying to open a door in order to find a hiding spot, she sees a man brutally killing a woman on the floor about 50 feet away, which prompts her to try and open that door even faster. She eventually does, and another death sequence occurs involving a woman living inside of that room.

Anyway, she manages to get the door shut *just* in time so the guy doesn't get the opportunity to attack her, and then the next morning arrives and the girl is sitting on the floor completely terrified. Eventually she finds the courage to escape. So far I'm strongly believing this is going to be a REALLY awesome movie.

After that... the entire film falls *completely* apart. I can't really understand just what the movie writers were going for concerning the second half, unless the entire point of the storyline was just to play a huge mind game on all the viewers as maybe an attempt to avoid the predictability factor of the signals capabilities and fearing the Signal would become just another typical horror film.

Or possibly the writers were trying to add some detective-like mystery to the storytelling and assumed it would work. Whatever it is, it simply did NOT work for me at all, and the Signal completely misses the mark as a result.

Obviously those strange signals appearing on the TV screens around the city were making everyone lose their minds and prompted everyone to enter "kill mode". Maybe the writers thought that horror element *alone* was just too cheesy or too easy to predict for storyline purposes, I don't know.

Anyway, here's what happens during the second half. A LOT of confusion. A completely different storyline than what we saw during the first half. Most people probably won't like it and will feel completely letdown, that's for sure.

It's about the womans husband and the man she's sleeping with both coming into contact with each other, and constantly questioning which one really IS the womans husband. This is such an unbelievably bizarre change of direction that I can't find the proper words to explain what the writers were thinking... and it takes up WAY too much darn unnecessary time.

Honestly, the only thing all that constant questioning the two of them did was confuse everyone watching the movie. Now it became extremely hard to know whether it's the husband or the cheater who's actually married to the woman. Yup, the storyline has now changed into something significantly less frightening and it never really stops either. It definitely doesn't change back to what made the film so good in the beginning.

Furthermore, prepare to see a lot of impossible to understand scenes involving people being shoved into the ground and kicked and smacked repeatedly. This just adds even MORE confusion to the giant mystery that is the second half of the Signal. People getting attacked inside this one home over and OVER again for no clear reason- ugh, make it stop!

Maybe you'd be able to appreciate the highly unusual change of storyline that takes place about halfway through, and maybe you'll actually understand what's going on during the second half. To me the second half just seems like constant pointless bickering between two guys fighting for the girl they love.

Supposedly the signals on TV screens make people lose their minds and turn violent. I'm sure there's better ways to take advantage of such a storyline besides *this*.

1/3 Great, 2/3 Doggie doo. Not a good mix. - BOTH RULE - New York, NY
This movie could have been so much better than it was. Not sure why so many people gave this movie such high praise. I guess they were not sober while watching it. The first third of the movie held my attention and although it was very similar to 28 days/weeks, the angle was different and interesting and had you wanting to know what the hell the signal was.

The second part of film was utter nonesense and a waste of time. It was trying too hard to be a horror comedy like "The Cottage." It was so predictible. Yawn. Anyone that likes this part of the movie, has obviously not seen enough horror comedy movies (Shaun of the Dead) because this part was not original in the slightest and not worth watching at all.

The third part felt misplaced, as if this director wanted it to be genius like "Memento" or something. Sorry, it just wasn't working. In the end, the Signal was meaningless. The Movie never told you where the signal came from, why it existed, or why should we care?

I really wanted to like this moving, especailly since the begining was rather good, but I can't in good consicous recommend this film. You would be better served to rent the individual DVDs of 28 Weeks Later, The Cottage or Shaun of the Dead, and Memento on their own.

Worth a rent - Brian A. Schar - Menlo Park, CA United States
"The Signal" is a decent movie, well-done for its low budget. Its biggest flaw is that it's uneven. It's not an anthology movie, but each act is written and directed by someone different, with the same characters. The first act is OK, and manages to generate an atmosphere of dread and chaos pretty effectively, even with a bit too much herky-jerky editing. It doesn't do as well with character, making act 1 somewhat lackluster. Then Act 2 begins, and the movie shifts from OK to awesome in about 15 seconds. Act 2 is by far the best segment of the movie, generating the best character moments of the movie. After act 1, it's a welcome relief. The most problematic act is Act 3, which is also OK, but seems worse after the greatness of act 2. The ending is unclear; I'm OK with that, given that we learn that the signal interferes with the perception of reality.

As my wife pointed out, "The Signal" bears some resemblance to "Cloverfield," in that it focuses on characters who don't really have any knowledge of the McGuffin and aren't involved in stopping it. It's an ideal POV for a cheap movie, but it leaves questions unanswered. Ultimately, we don't really need to know what the signal is or where it came from, though, and "The Signal" was probably wise to leave those questions alone. You probably won't want to add this to your permanent collection, but it's at least worth a rent.

Too Clever For Its Own Good - S. P. Miskowski - West Coast, US
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.

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Wednesday, November 3, 2010