| The Signal | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | David Bruckner Dan Bush Jacob Gentry |
| Produced by | Alexander A. Motlagh |
| Written by | David Bruckner Dan Bush Jacob Gentry |
| Starring | A. J. Bowen Anessa Ramsey Justin Welborn |
| Music by | Ben Lovett |
| Release date(s) | February 22, 2008 |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $50,000 |
| Box office | $251,150[1] |
The Signal is an independent psychological horror-comedy film written and directed by David Bruckner, Dan Bush, Jacob Gentry and produced by Alexander A. Motlagh—four filmmakers who have been collaborating since 1999 in Atlanta, Georgia. The movie was completed for the 2007 Sundance Film Festival on a budget of only $50,000 and shot over the course of 13 days.[2]
The film premiered January 22, 2007 at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, where it was acquired by Magnolia Pictures and released on DVD on June 10, 2008. The Signal is rated R for strong brutal bloody violence throughout, pervasive language, and brief nudity.
Contents |
The Signal is a science fiction horror film told in three parts, in which all telecommunication devices broadcast only a mysterious "Signal" turning people insane. The film is broken up into three chapters ("transmissions"), each of which had different directors during shooting. Each part manifests elements of the following genres: splatter film, black comedy, and a post-apocalyptic horror-love story.
The film opens, showing that Mya (Anessa Ramsey) is cheating on her husband Lewis (A. J. Bowen) with a man named Ben (Justin Welborn). The lovers plan to escape from the city of Terminus (the old name for Atlanta) on a train together that night, which is New Year's Eve. As Mya exits, Ben turns the TV on, showing a bizarre, psychedelic sequence of images. Mya begins to listen to a CD given to her by Ben, but is menaced by men who are acting strangely in a parking garage. When she reaches her apartment building, she finds people acting strangely as well. Unknown to Mya, the Signal, a static-like interference that is coming through the TV, radio and telephone amplifies each person's negative emotional traits, causing them to act irrationally and in most cases violently.
Once inside her apartment, Lewis and two friends, Jerry and Rod (Sahr Ngaujah) attempt to fix the TV, but Lewis, the first to react to the Signal, beats Jerry to death with a baseball bat over a minor argument. Mya escapes in panic, leaving Rod and Lewis in a struggle. After escaping, she finds the whole building in chaos with people killing each other. Mya hides out in the nearby apartment until morning. When she decides to leave and re-enter her home, she finds an unconscious Lewis, bound to a chair with duct-tape. He awakens only to see her leave him behind and exit into the hall listening to Ben's CD, but encounters Rod who drags her into a janitor's closet. He then tells her of the night he spent trying to survive in the apartment complex. It becomes evident that the Signal affects each person differently, and that there is the possibility that Rod is also crazy, though he seems to largely have control of his own judgement. Together, they escape, and attempt to drive to safety, but after being shot by a policewoman and almost left behind by Mya, Rod turns on the radio in anger, exposing himself to the Signal. He goes violently insane and attacks Mya, who crashes the car. Rod is incapacitated and trapped in the vehicle, and Mya flees, telling a passerby named Clark (Scott Poythress) that she is going to the train station to leave Terminus.
The story turns to Ben, who finds the duct-taped Lewis and loosens his bonds. Lewis knocks Ben unconscious and puts his body in the back of a pest control van. At a nearby apartment, Anna (Cheri Christian) is setting up for a New Year party. The Signal has affected her so that her dutifulness as a homemaker is amplified, and despite having killed her crazed husband in self-defense, she has continued planning for the party as if nothing has happened. Clark, who is her neighbour and a conspiracy theory nut, soon arrives. The two begin attempting to figure out what is happening, and Clark also admits that he had decapitated Rod, who had attacked him after being freed from the car wreck. Eventually Lewis makes his way to the apartment, wrongly under the belief that Mya has been there because her car is crashed outside. At first, Lewis befriends Anna and Clark, and they convince themselves that none of them have been affected by the Signal, and that they have to band together in order to survive. Lewis, whose violent and paranoid tendencies are clearly amplified by the Signal, immediately kills Anna's niece, Laura (Lindsey Garrett), who arrives at the door seeking help. He dismisses the act as self-defense, but Clark convinces him not to attack the next arrival, Jim (Chad McKnight) who is apparently oblivious of the situation. While Anna hallucinates that Clark is her husband, Lewis hallucinates that Jim is Ben, taunting him. He beats Jim to death, then attacks Anna, spraying her with insecticide until she is blind. Once he realizes she knows nothing about Mya's whereabouts, Lewis forces her to ingest the poison, killing her. He then exposes Clark to the Signal in order to convince him to tell him where Mya had gone. Ben, having woken up and freed himself from Lewis's van, enters the apartment and attacks Lewis with the pesticide canister, knocking him out.
Lewis wakes up and follows Ben and Clark. He attempts to kill them in a tool shed, but they fight him off and escape. After Ben convinces Clark that the Signal "is a lie", thus breaking its effect on him, Clark informs Ben where Mya was headed. Ben and Clark make a run through the now mostly-dead city and arrive at the train station. There, they find Mya tied to a chair, being forced to watch the Signal by Lewis, who attcks them and strangles Clark until he is unconscious. Ben then resorts to use Lewis's own paranoia against him, eventually tricking Lewis into believing that their roles are reversed, and that Lewis is the one man he hates most: Mya's "other man". Lewis punches a signal-broadcasting TV in a frustrated rage, electrocuting himself.
The story ends ambiguously. A series of scenes showing Ben and Mya escaping with Clark, stocking up on supplies, then Ben and Mya going separate ways from Clark, suggesting they've succeeded. However we then see Mya still tied to the chair, seemingly lost due the prolonged exposure to the Signal. Ben places Mya's headphones on her and she closes her eyes, a tear rolling down her cheek, before the credits appear. Whether this is the final reality, or a flashback before Ben and Mya's escape from the city, is left for the viewer to decide.
After long delay due to the search for a song to replace an unlicensed cover of Lou Reed's "Perfect Day" by Jon Thomas Hall in the soundtrack, the film was theatrically released on February 22, 2008.[3] The song finally used is a cover of Joy Division's "Atmosphere" by Ola Podrida. As a promotion for the film, a new short podcast was released bi-weekly through bloody-disgusting.com, a horror film news site.[4]
On February 23, 2008, two men were stabbed in a Fullerton, California movie theatre during a showing of The Signal. One suffered non life-threatening injuries to his arm, while the other suffered a lung puncture.[5]
The film received 55% of positive reviews at Rotten Tomatoes, with consensus that "The Signal is gruesome, funny, and has big thoughts about society, but those disparate elements fail to come together convincingly."[6] As of August 2009, it is user rated 6.2/10 on Internet Movie Database.