The Signal

(2007) *1/2

Since this is now the third time this movie has been reviewed I can’t see rehashing the plot again. Instead, here’s a quick recap:

Looking at this:


Equals this:
This movie totally pissed me off, and I wasn’t even supposed to have watched it. JPX gave me a burned DVD labeled “Inside,” but it turned out to be this. About five minutes in I realized what I was watching, but by this time I was already hooked and preceded. I remembered JPX saying that it started off great but then went wrong, but I couldn’t remember what the problem was. I thought this movie was awesome and couldn’t figure out how, when, or why it would begin to suck. Instead, I started to wonder if maybe it wasn’t the movie at all and that JPX had been drunk. However, then part I ends and proceeds to part II where we encounter a completely different movie, and to use JPX’s words it is kind of “slapstick.” Suddenly, JPX’s review came rushing back, and I remembered him noting that each part was directed by a different person.

Though I actually liked part I and part II of this film, I had to give it a low rating for its inconsistency, and also because I hated part III, which I’ll get into momentarily. First, picture that you’re watching this crazy movie where everyone is brutally murdering one another for unknown reasons. While trying to escape her demented husband, Mya, the protagonist, slips and falls on a puddle of blood oozing from a corpse. She runs to her neighbor’s apartment for safety from a madman trying to kill her with clippers, but is greeted by strangulation. The beginning scenes have created a frightening atmosphere that the viewer expects to continue through the length of the film, but instead in part II becomes a comedy. The entire mood and tone changes not just by the script and acting, but the colors which have been transformed into a sea of pastels – pinks, mint greens, baby blues, and yellows, the camera bobs up and down in a “don’t take me too serious anymore” kind of way, and the music has become a bit circus like and silly.

Part II was actually good in a Shaun of the Dead kind of way, but I couldn’t enjoy it because I wanted to go back to part I. That was the movie I had committed to watching. They broke a huge rule in this film. You have to stick with the expectations you have set for your audience. The groundwork is laid out at the beginning, and that structure has to be followed to a certain extent. A scene can take a sudden unexpected turn, a seemingly sane character can suddenly go crazy, but it has to be within reason. It has to be believable to the audience or it fails. You can’t just pull shit out of thin air, mash it together, and expect it’s going to work.

A scene from part II

Part III is annoying for several reasons. For example, its tone is a combination of part I and II, by this point I'm sick and tired of seeing and hearing Mya’s crazy husband Lewis, and most importantly, it goes back to Mya, who hasn’t been seen since part I, and expects me to care. It had been so long that I just about forgot what she looked like. Mya was a strong character at the beginning of the film, and now they show her as weak and defeated. I had a hard time buying that without actually seeing what happened to her. Though, I felt so far removed from her that really I didn’t care. I thought her and her lover Ben’s romantic storyline at the beginning was sweet and engaging. I particularly like in part I when she is surrounded by chaos, and the world is seemingly crumbling around her that she puts on her headphones and listens to a mixed CD that Ben made for her. It seems to keep her sanity as she maneuvers down a bloody corpse filled hallway, and at that moment it is her only reminder of life before this. The movie tries to go back to the love story at the end, but the problem is that I don’t care anymore.

I thought they were going somewhere great with this film, but then it suddenly falls into a totally different movie. It tries to go back into part I at the end, but it can’t because it is still carrying around remnants of part II, and it is so far removed that it can’t find it’s way back, making part III the worst part of the movie, and ending it on a sour and disappointing note.