The Signal

Taylor365

Didn't see any post of this. Looks interesting.

What has me intrigued most is the haunting trailer music.

Been looking forward to this since it was first announced. William Eubank is one of the most interesting directors around, his first film Love which he financed himself and shot on a space ship he built in his patents back garden is an extraordinary work if cinema. One of the most visually inventive and aesthetically beautiful films you are ever likely to see.

charlie_says

Looks interesting. Also liked William Eubank's Love. Powerful visual style.

czechpeter

Did anyone end up seeing this and is it any good?

Ageyev

czechpeter wrote: »

Did anyone end up seeing this and is it any good?

Watched it about two months ago. It's OK but not great. It's one of these smallish scifi films that we've seen a lot of over the past number of years - films I usually like eg Primer, Time Lapse, Ex Machina, The Machine, Predestination etc. This didn't really hook me and towards the final act I was impatiently waiting for it to finish.

pixelburp

czechpeter wrote: »

Did anyone end up seeing this and is it any good?

Watched it some time ago; posted my thoughts elsewhere, so for what it's worth here's what I thought of it:

...
There's a thin line between a narrative being enigmatic and just plain withholding from the audience, and I wasn't quite sure where something like The Signal fell to be honest. As it stood, it started as a simple, down-to-earth road movie about three students taking a detour to locate a rogue hacker that had been plaguing their college. Things then took a turn for the weird and conspiratorial, and to say anymore would spoil too much; if nothing else it's definitely a film worth diving into as ignorant as possible. And while it never made any bones about ensuring the audience were in the dark 'til the last minute (and even then there was little really to go on beyond your own speculation) there were also moments where the film felt like it was being deliberately vague, idiosyncratic and withholding for no other reason than the fact that the writers could. That or there just wasn't the budget or script to develop events, but you can't keep piling mystery upon mystery and not eventually run out of road.

That said, there was a lot to admire all the same; the pacing at the start really matched the plot, with a lazy, languid tone that suited the notion of a roadtrip across the American desert. The three leads felt natural and 'ordinary' in a fashion that's depressingly rare when it comes to Hollywood's representation of teenagers. However, once the the roadtrip ended and the 'fi' became 'sci', the slow-moving pace worked against the film and simply added to my sense of frustration. The film needed a dire injection of pace imo.

Ageyev

Would agree with pixel's criticism there.

TinCool

Watched it a couple of weeks ago. Thought it pretty boring. The characters themselves were forgettable. Fishbourne does his usual thing. The end closes off why the things were the way they were. Forgettable movie.

Mizu_Ger

Ageyev wrote: »

Would agree with pixel's criticism there.

me too

indough

There is tricking your audience and then there is cheating them, this film seems to do the latter with its overuse of red herrings that lead nowhere.

I think they could have taken the second half of the story in much more interesting directions. The final act left me with the feeling that the director was using it as an audition for a superhero film.

Mizu_Ger

It's all build up with a disappointing and abrupt payoff.

There was some brief excitment when he started running across the bridge a the end, but that only lasted a few seconds. When he breaks through there's a feeling of "is that it"? An ending ripped from Dark City