The Signal (DVD)

In my "On DVD Today" article last week I wondered how exactly Magnolia's The Signal could have possibly made only $251,150 at the box-office. I had seen the trailer and it looked pretty good. A film about some strange signal sent through television screens and other various electronic devices that causes people to go crazy and start killing other people out of what appears to be simple irrationality. I can dig it. On top of that, it was rated R and had one guy that thought he was Ryan Reynolds, another that could be Paul Bettany and a girl that reminded me of someone but I can't quite place my finger on it, but Cheri Christian, who plays Anna, certainly reminds me of Minnie Driver. None of this really matters, I just thought I would point it out.

The Signal actually is an interesting film... at first, but it goes way, way, way wrong. The movie is broken up into three parts, and while all three build upon the one before it, none of them actually seem to be telling the same movie. This film can't figure out if it is a horror, drama, dark comedy, mystery, thriller, etc. This movie is all over the place and while that can work in some instances it falls all kinds of apart here.

I bet if you browse around reviews of this flick (sorry, I was too lazy to do so) you will see several that say it has a fantastic first act, but the second and third are no good. That couldn't be truer. The first act actually sets up everything the trailers promised. The first act would have made a killer Masters of Horror segment. It would have left things up in the air, but sometimes that isn't all that bad.

Then we move to act two. Now, I understand the signal makes everyone crazy, but I am not sure if I am supposed to laugh at the crazy and it also makes it hard to enjoy the film when you don't know who is crazy. We have Anna. Is she crazy because of the signal or just an idiot in shock? We have Clark. Everything tells us he isn't crazy, but you have to tell me how he can watch someone who obviously is crazy just smash someone's head in with a pesticide canister much like the infamous fire extinguisher head squashing in Irreversible (oooh, that one made me turn my head).

Moving from act two we have act three. This is where we have two people who may or may not be crazy (at this point it is as if it is a new film so the ambiguity of their state of mind actually isn't as troubling) and they must find someone we lost from act one. The problem with this third of the film is nothing more than the fact that it is boring. It's long, drawn out and boring. On top of that, directors David Bruckner, Dan Bush and Jacob Gentry (yeah, there are three of them) continue to go back to the same well over, and over, and over again. I am not a fan of the plotline fake out and when you do it more than once I get frustrated. When you do it more than twice I get annoyed. When you do it more than three times I give up. It's just bad storytelling. It's like the dream sequences in films where the people wake up gasping; it's tired and no one falls for it anymore, and even if they did, it's just frustrating. (That is unless it is the original ending to Neil Marshall's The Descent, which is kick ass!)

The Signal has some good gore, a great first act and some decent acting from a group of unknowns. Unfortunately the three director/writer approach actually turns into making three different movies. Too bad only one of them is worth watching and when the first 35 minutes of your film are good and the last 70 are bad you don't stand much of a chance.