2008 DVD Review: The Signal

The Signal is a low budget indie horror film that enjoyed a brief theatrical run earlier this year. It's too bad it didn't receive a wider distribution, because The Signal is easily scarier, wittier, and more heartfelt that about 90% of theatrically released horror films. In the forebodingly named city of Terminus, a mysterious electrical signal suddenly appears on all bands of communication: television, cell phones, land lines, radio. All those exposed to it eventually turn into homicidal maniacs. There's a superficial similarity to a recent Stephen King novel, Cell, but the film's conceit is actually much more rich and interesting. Rather than becoming slathering murder-beasts instantly, as in King's novel, the "crazies" in The Signal slowly become detached from reality, with the nature of their insanity determined by the underlying resentments and jealousies hiding dormant in their psyches. The viewer is never sure if what they're seeing is real, or simply the delusion of the character. The uncertainty is amplified by the fact that the "crazies" reveal themselves slowly: a character who seems at first glance to have avoided crazification, will, over time, reveal themselves to be shithouse nuts.

What makes the film really pop is the fact, while the it features three main characters throughout (a cheating wife, her cuckold husband, and her lover), it's split into three distinct "transmissions" focusing on the point of view of each one. The three segments are helmed by different directors, and have different moods. Transmission one, in which the cheating wife returns home to find her entire apartment building full of murderous crazies, including her husband, is an adrenalized shot of anarchic terror. Transmission two, which finds the cuckold husband, on a quest to find his wife, attending an extremely bizarre new years party, hits a sweet note of lurid violence and deadpan comedy. Transmission three finds the lover questing after the wife, and shifts the mood to hysterical romance in the last-reel-of-28 Days Later tradition. As with most anthology films, the different pieces are a bit uneven in quality (transmission 2 was my favorite, hands down), but the singular plot and group of characters keep it from seeming disjointed. Most impressively, the film squeezes every drop of value from its miniscule budget, although there aren't enough moments of apocalyptic mayhem.(god, I love my apocalyptic mayhem!) I really wish someone would throw 60 or 70 million bucks at these guys so that they could make a sort of sequel/remake, like Robert Rodriquez did with Desperado.

Score: 8.0