| Overall Grade: |
C- |
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| Story: |
C+ |
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| Acting: |
B- |
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| Direction: |
C- |
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| Visuals: |
B |
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From a reviewer who likes GOOD horror films
by Dock M (movies profile)
Aug 4, 2008
1
of
1 people found this review helpful
The Signal" starts out great, very intense, dark, and interesting. Unfortunately the film is set up into three parts, and both the second and third part are no where near as enjoyable or convincing as the first act (Transmission 1). This director/writer(s) had enough strong material for about 30 minutes. During the first act, my friends and I were sitting there shocked, impressed, intrigued (sounds of Wow, OMG, Holy sh!!, etc). The production initially does a great job with convincing us that a mysterious frequency via peoples electronics are really turning them into psycho, crazed maniacs by playing on their emotions and amplifying the ego's negatives, such as fear, anger, etc. There also seems to be some subliminal messages: That we have become too attached to our electronics; too much electronics are bad or unhealthy.
From the few, smartly created city shots in the first third of the film, it really feels like the entire city is in chaos. It feels believable, regardless of the budget. It turns out that my friends and I were not the only ones who thought that the film would continue that intense direction whereas a woman attempts to escape a psycho ridden city. The concept would be to survive, fight, and use smart maneuvers to evade this competition of darkness. That is of course, if the writing called for it, or those who produced and created this film had the budget, or whatever. The film takes a dull direction and never revives itself completely.
After the first 30 minutes, The Signal turns into like a dark humor, horror/comedy of sorts. It's a pale shadow of its former self, by losing the edge and intensity so greatly developed during the first 33 minutes. The second 33 or so minutes takes takes place inside a house involving a jealous husband. I won't go into details but it is just bad and felt very misguided. The entire tone in the second third doesn't correlate with the mood or tone of the first third. It's very disappointing for those expecting the film to continue the strong first-third direction. The last third wasn't horrible but it feels very drawn out and definitely not riveting like the first 30 minutes.
Overall the film was disappointing. It has some interesting ideas but only enough solid execution to last a thirty minute good movie. And maybe that's really what they initially had. I don't know. But it seems like the writers were unsure where to take the concept of "The Signal" after the first act. But where they did take the film feels like a sloppy, dark and poorly humorous skit than the intensity in the first act. The end has a couple thoughtful ideas relative to "The Signal" and how one can use it to his/her advantage, but by that point, interest was all but lost completely. We discussed the film afterwards and all openly agreed that it had a great thing going for it. But whatever happened past the first 30 or so minutes was disappointing. This film had potential to be so awesome. It does virtually everything right in the first third and completely failed to arrest attention after that.
C- |
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