Review of The Signal (2014) by Weldon G — 09 Jul 2014

Being part Road Movie and part Science Fiction adventure story, The Signal is -- while providing some satisfying visuals -- an ultimately pointless endeavour, having lost its narrative cohesion somewhere along the way to the movie theatre.

The setting is quickly summarized in its generic charme. Three young college friends traveling from A to B. They are young and invulnerable. They have not much of a past and not much of a future, the viewer suspects. A Blair-Witch-Project-themed interlude proves them right. We land in some secret scientific lair. People without facial expression walk around in hazmat suits. Flashbacks and more generic story follow.

The screenwriter tries to confound the viewer by multiple interludes, but by that point the greater part of the bare bones of the story have already become clear by futile attempts at mysterious dialouge. (Hint: "Are you agitated?") It appears that at some point the writer himself lost control of his story. During a wild chase, the Helpless Woman Protagonist suddenly acquires a pair of shoes from one cut to the next. Her Male Saviors shirt has coffee stains or not without regard to continuity.

After watching the narrative fail as a road movie, a teenage romance and a coming-of-age story, I tried to suffer through the rest of the film treating it as a comedy of errors. Only it failed at that, too. Suddenly the teenagers (except for the female, of course) acquire superpowers via alien meddling, which leads to some scenes stolen from a generic marvel movie. For fun villains wrapped in duct tape, who escaped from a game of Counter Strike also appear and are vanquished. There are some explosions and some gunshots.

Finally the (now) lone hero, through trial and tribulation, emerges from the womb.... pardon... the remains of what started out as an attempt at a story.... in a great visual climax that is the end of the movie. My relief climaxes, too, as the ending minute celebrates pure visual aesthetics without dialogue. I suppose the rest of the movie would be better off without speaking as well. Because in parts it is well-made and pretty. Only that is not enough.