Running time: 1 hr 39 mins
*** out of *****
Mikey @ The Movies Official Rating:
**** out of *****
The premise:
A horror film told in three parts, from three perspectives, in which a mysterious transmission that turns people into killers invades every cell phone, radio, and television.MY REVIEW
I may be being a tad over generous towards this film by giving it a full four star rating. But the fact of the matter is, to me, The Signal is an astonishingly suprising movie. I read the synopsis for the movie, before even seeing a preview for it, and I just judged it in a bad way. On paper, this movie sounds rediculous. But in reality, after watching it, this is one hell of an original and fresh horror movie. In a world FULL of zombie movies and zombie movies...and zombie movies, The Signal offers us something different. What if a we somehow intercepted a frequency that was sent through our televisions, and corrupted our minds through some form of subliminal message?It's not even that far fetched of an idea really. Subliminal messages used to be a real thing. They have since been banned and made illegal, but it did happen. Now of course, it was never so extreme in this films case. But they flashed on TV screens and made people want to go out and buy Coca Cola, or some other product. The Signal takes that concept and glorifies it to a major extreme, and it works. By the end of this movie, we never find out where this signal comes from. We don't even know exactly what it is. What we know is what it does. It replaces your common thinking with those irrational thoughts that take place in your brain. It moves the bad thoughts higher up on the list. It makes us physically hallucinate false images of happiness. This signal makes us take our irrational thoughts and act on them in pursuit of what would make us and people we love, happy. Personally, I think that is a brilliant and different idea for a horror movie.
If you think about it, the movie is kind of a slap in the face. We as America are obsessed with television and music. Not to mention movies and magazines. Yet these outlets are constantly feeding us lies. We see these programs with attractive young people wearing the hip new clothes, so now we have to fit in to the mold to look cool. We will cut our hair to look like the hot young celebs of today. We throw out curse words a million times a minute because hey, people in music do it and that's cool right? Television and movies, and music constantly feed us lies for us to buy things and make ourselves someone we are not because we think that's what will make us happy. Because if these people on TV look that pretty and they are happy, why can't I? Maybe I'm overanalyzing the story of the movie, but it really isn't that far of a stretch from what I think they were getting at.
Sorry, back to the actual movie. Is this film gory? Yes, very much so. I do not recommend it for people who aren't big fans of the genre, or who just don't like gore and even vulgarity. But in all honesty, this is a very well made film. It is very sleek looking, especially for an independtly released horror movie. The film had three directors and writers. Each one wrote and directed a segment of the movie (The movie is told in three parts). And you can tell all of them collaborated so very well here. I mean this really is a fine piece of horror film. I'm so glad I saw it! Even the performances were really good! I mean I don't know any of these actors, but dang were they good in this movie. And I mean that on horror movie performance standards. If these guys were in Crash, no they wouldn't win Oscars, but for this genre, some of the best performances I've seen in a long time. A very long time!!
To view this film's theatrical trailer, click this link: Signal
*This is the 120th new film I've seen and reviewed this year.
*This film is now on DVD.
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