Review of The Signal (2014) by Omonrise — 01 Jul 2014

So you see Morpheus and think "dude, he is not human". You see that ridiculously outdated lab together with the high-tech "legs" and you think "ok, the aliens have them". The movie sacrifices any realism to create some cheap comic book moments (e.g. when the dude slams the ground, wtf, his arms should have been destroyed).

On a more general note, the pacing utterly sucks, there is no logic whatsoever behind the characters' actions, and neither is there any behind the actions of the antagonists / aliens. The protagonist is cliché hacker genius of the 21st century, his gf is cliché emotionally unstable supporting female character, his illness is presented in such a way that you get the feeling someone just decided to include this "perk" during character creation. There is no emotional struggle apart from "OMG MY GF IS IN COMA Q_Q", the characters don't reflect at all, (for example, you are in a supposedly high-sec facility and you are intelligent enough to draw a comprehensive plan of how it's build etc., but it never occurs to you that it's mightily strange that they didn't include any entropy in their patrolling patterns? COME ON.).

But be it as it may, plot holes, ignoring physics, shallow characters - you can compensate all that with a good story and good visuals. The movie does deliver on the visuals, but everything that happens in it just has no point. Absolutely none. There is not a single logical reason for ANYTHING in the storyline to happen. You find yourself thinking "ok, so that just happened. cool." ALL THE TIME. It's like the director / producer wrote literally 1 paragraph, then drugged someone to lend them money. And the visuals? sure, they are astoundingly beautiful, but in the end this just makes you sad because so many talented CGI artists / filmmakers are wasting their careers working on such mindless junk when they could be creating inspiring and beautiful movies.