William Eubank's The Signal follows in the footsteps of other independent, low-budget films that have been released this year that have tried to expand upon the horizons of the respective genre they have adhered to. For the case of sci-fi, we have already had Alex Garland's brilliantly edgy Ex Machina, and for horror, we had the not-so brilliant It Follows. The Signal focuses on two hackers, who on their way to dropping off the not-so-hacker female of the group, Bates Motel's Olivia Cooke, decide to come face-to-face with rival hacker NOMAD in the middle of Nevada. Hey, the film's set in Nevada. Guess what... There might be a twist of who's really there.
The first thing I have to say in the case of The Signal is that it succeeds in making It Follows seem a much better film than I first thought, with it's attempt at producing a kind of spooky, kind of arty sci-fi flick falling flat on its' face and instead, presents something so skull-shaterringly dull and incomprehensibly stupid, I was ready to leave as soon as the credits rolled in order to erase it from my mind completely. I began to lose all hope entirely towards the latter stage of the film where it decides to sway from its' original echoes of horror as promised in the opening stages of the film and instead, turns into a cross between District 9 and RoboCop; and not in a good way.
The first thing I have to say in the case of The Signal is that it succeeds in making It Follows seem a much better film than I first thought, with it's attempt at producing a kind of spooky, kind of arty sci-fi flick falling flat on its' face and instead, presents something so skull-shaterringly dull and incomprehensibly stupid, I was ready to leave as soon as the credits rolled in order to erase it from my mind completely. I began to lose all hope entirely towards the latter stage of the film where it decides to sway from its' original echoes of horror as promised in the opening stages of the film and instead, turns into a cross between District 9 and RoboCop; and not in a good way.
In a sentence? Boring, boring, offensively stupid. The Signal reminded me how bad Series 8 and 9 of The X Files were, as the film feels like a rejected two-part episode of such albeit without Agent Scully, and without requiring a need from the audience to actually care about what is going on. Although it starts well, the film descends into something I'm sure you will find The Signal in the bargain bin soon. Not good.
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