Review of The Signal (2014) by Jeff B — 31 Dec 2015

Some have called this film odd, quirky, weird. I'm going to go one better than that and re-title the film 101 Questions. But before I get to the questions, let's look at the overall story and pacing. At the outset, the film builds backstory establishing friendships and a romance issue. Then it picks up when the boys think they're tracking a rival hacker. As they track the "signal," if you will, it culminates at an abandoned house in the middle of nowhere where the movie takes its greatest leap: alien contact.

But here is where the questions begin. First of all, why is the technology used by Damon and other govt. officials decades removed? And what's with the odd, irrelevant questions and comments made by Damon?. Here I'm going to cut to the chase (spoiler alert!) and ask why would an advanced race of aliens experiment on inferior humans by replacing disabled legs or, more puzzling, working hands and arms with alien constructs? Yes, we discover that Damon is Nomad, the alleged hacker, but in reality an alien on a spacecraft running experiments on three earthlings. Were these experiments run only so the aliens could claim a first?

But there are also questions of the what-the-hell-am-I-looking-at category. What's happening when two aliens standing behind a pane of glass with a cow before them in a closed space open a door, and the next thing you see is a chair flying out of the darkness? Oh, but there's more. To set up, I assume the two other humans on this Area 51 replica, if that, are human experiments gone wrong? But why does Damon or Nomad kill them with an earth handgun? And as Haley, Nic, and Jonah attempt to escape, why are they shot at by the aliens? I mean they aren't going anywhere. They're on a space ship. And finally, are the aliens robots? Is it a robot race or have the aliens sent robots to do their bidding to avoid potential contamination with these humans? The aliens are obviously quite intellectually superior, so what answers are they looking for with their simplistic questions and crude methodologies?

As regards the fate of Haley and Nic, I'm guessing from what we've seen that their lives won't be spared. So bottom line, what's the damn point of this movie? Even during the most intriguing moments (or at least they should have been) on the ship, the story gets bogged down in a slow paced, uneventful, question-provoking-only mess. The conclusion only releases questions, nothing more. Even when the movie got interesting (the appearance of Nomad), I soon found myself only wanting to get to the end to find out what the hell was going on. But then the end, as I said, only raised a bunch of questions. I'm all for the odd and unusual, and I'll even be patient to see a movie through to its conclusion before making any judgement, but this one really tested my patience and resolve. I heard there might be a sequel where many of these questions will be answered. We'll see. For now, I only have 101 questions.