Three college students on a road trip across the Southwest experience a detour: the tracking of a computer genius who has already hacked into MIT and exposed security faults. The trio find themselves drawn to an eerily isolated area. Suddenly everything goes dark. When one of the students, Nic (Brenton Thwaites of The Giver and Maleficent), regains consciousness, he is in a waking nightmare… (c) Focus
The Signal is a delicate artistic balance of grainy, gritty and gorgeous cinematography depending on the mood displayed on screen. Audiences will follow suite as well. It is an uneven movie not sure if it wants to be sci-fi, horror, drama. It balances too many genres yet seemed to not know what it wanted. Actor Lawrence Fishburne was the most recognizable actor and was appropriate to slowly reveal answers to a confused protagonist. The Signal grabbed my attention for most of the running time. Even when I wasn’t sure what was happening or where it was going, I was eager to discover where the movie was heading next!? Cinematically, it isn’t very focused in telling a story.
Though far from perfect, I enjoyed The Signal because it got me thinking. Rarely a good-looking movie opening in summer does that. It is a movie that is open for debate. Afterwards, I had a lot to discuss well beyond the end of closing credits. It gave me a lot to digest and translate. I’m not sure what really happened (especially with the ending). The Signal had me thinking for a It is reminiscent of an extended, old-fashioned Twilight Zone episode filled with more questions than answers and plenty of chilling paranoia.
I would rate The Signal 6 out of 10.
