Review of The Signal (2007) by Kate M — 13 Jul 2008

As citizens of fictional town Terminus prepare for New year celebrations, a mysterious signal transmitting out of every electronic device transforms normal sane everyday people into murderous rampaging psycopaths. All forms of communication have been jammed and replaced by this mysetry signal which seems to feed on fear and inner most desires. Once a normal town, the streets of Terminus have now lost all semblance to order and have become the setting for brutal carnage, and chaos. Against this setting, a love story â?? a tale of a man who manages to steer clear of the signal´s ability to blur sanity, and who sets off to rescue the woman he loves and take her to safety. But in order to achieve this he must first fend off her rabiod husband and multiple others who have become affected by the signal´s mind alteration.

The Signal feels like a Romero zombie movie without the ozmbies. People have turned insane and are being driven by fear and inner most desires. The movie is split into three parts, each with its own director. However, despite the divisions, and the fact that each segment of the story has its own feel to it, the three directors manage to work well to coombine all three elements and make it feel like the same story.

Part 1 sets the story and could be described as a zombie movie with plenty of gore, blood and violence. Part 2 provides some relief, for although the carnage is just as present, the movie takes on a comedic tone, albeit a surreal one and takes a momentarily hiatus from the action. For the final stint and the conclusion, the movie returns to the tone of the first part.

After watching The Signal, I would describe it as a Horror movie, that borrows heavily from other flicks from the genre, such as The Ring and the zombie movies, and then fuses it with every other movie genre imaginable, comedy, drama, love story... The Signal feels like a very surreal movie that like its thematic, borders on insanity. It is very violent and very graphic â?? defintely not for the faint hearted.

With the whole signal thing, one could read this as a criticism that over exposure to the media is leading us to insanity, but this reading then falls flat on its face when one of the central characters in the story puts on her ear phones and plays her music in order to isolate herself from the insanity around her.

All in all, not a bad movie. Very surreal, violent, graphical, and somtimes uncomfortable to watch. I guess I cannot decide properly on this one.