Justin does The Signal

“I don’t have the crazy.”

The Scoop: 2007 R, directed by David Bruckner, Dan Bush & Jacob Gentry, and starring Anessa Ramsey, AJ Bowen & Justin Welborn.

Tagline: This is not a test.

Summary Capsule: TV makes people go bonkers and kill left and right. I guess they were watching Jerry Springer.

Justin’s Rating: Too much TV is bad for the eyes. And the rest of your body.

Justin’s Review: One of the reasons I still champion the horror industry is, for some reason, it frees up screenwriters and directors to be insanely creative. Horror allows you to throw out a lot of conventional rules, making the opportunity to shape a world the way you’d like it to be. Sure, usually those worlds have a lot of running, tripping and “oh NOOOOO!” bleatings, but I’m constantly surprised with the amount of cool ideas that grow in the fertile compost heap of death and terror.

The Signal has a good idea – great, even – that slowly falters and then collapses under a lack of unified vision. Still, the idea is there, and in the hands of a more capable director, it might be revived to do the concept justice.

Taking a cue from Stephen King’s book The Cell and George Romero’s The Crazies, this movie begins with a mysterious signal jamming all the airwaves – TV, radio, phones – that begins to drive people nuts. Not like “dysfunctional family fun” nuts, more like “take gardening shears to my neighbor’s neck” nuts. Overnight, the city of Terminus (*polite cough*) goes from same-old routine to a war zone between irrational murderers and the terrified normies. Kind of like a zombie movie, but with less shambling and more duct tape.

No definitive explanation is given for the signal, nor are there any set rules as to how much exposure to it will drive you mad. I was prepared to be a bit more freaked out by the signal itself – envisioning a bit of the weird video tape from The Ring — but it just looks like a kalideoscope with some noise interference.

This is all backdrop to the main story, which involves an adulterous wife who is trying to escape her newly psychopathic hubby and find her lover. Although this dynamic is ripe for character conflict, it’s more or less a chase scene with predictable stops at Horror Blvd.

This is where we come to the crux of The Signal’s failing: it is a story told in three parts, by three directors, in three incredibly different tones. The first half-hour segment is arguably the best: straight-forward horror, apocalyptic breakdown, gritty vision. Then the movie shifts into its second segment — slapstick black comedy — as smoothly as a car going from drive to reverse at 65 mph. You may wonder why the drive train is continuing down the road while you’re drifting sideways into oncoming traffic. Seriously, this bizarre change in tone completely eliminates the work of the first half hour, going for a weird Shaun of the Dead-style of horror parody. Then the third director takes the reigns, and the final segment wobbles to an unsatisfying halt.

Why a 90-minute film needed three directors for a simple concept, I know not. I had pretty high hopes for this apocalyptic twist on the genre, and if things had kept on going in the vein of the first half hour, we might have had a sleeper hit on our hands. As it is… my heart will go on. This film will not.

Late night cable... it's enough to drive anyone insane

Intermission!

The opening sequence is an excerpt from “The Hap Hapgood Story,” a winning entry in the 48-hour film festival directed by Jacob Gentry.

Groovy Quotes

Clark: Anna, I need a couple of things that Ken borrowed, namely my hatchet… and some garbage bags.

Ben: What was that? That was strange.
Mya Denton: [in bed] Come back.
Ben: The TV turned itself on.

Clark: It was self defense.
Anna: You chopped his head off!

If You Liked This Movie, Try These:

• Shaun of the Dead

• The Crazies
• Dawn of the Dead