The Signal (2014)

What do you do when you wake up in a strange location and don’t know what’s going on around you? In June 2014, Nic was stuck in that very situation…

Directing this 97 minute sci-fi/thriller is William Eubank.

The cast is: Brenton Thwaites as Nic, Olivia Cooke as Haley, Beau Knapp as Jonah and Laurence Fishburne as Damon.

Nic, Jonah and Haley were on the hunt of a computer hacker that did them wrong. After finally tracking down the hacker, the face to face Nic wanted turned out to be something he never expected –

Leaving him wishing he had never started down this road.

I was sitting in the theater when I caught the trailer for this one, and man it looked cool! I wasn’t sure what it was exactly about, which I kind of liked. A little mystery in films is hard to come by these days so when I finally find some I consider it a good thing.

This one was written by Carlyle Eubank, Wiliam Eubank and David Frigerio. The story starts out as a found footage film, which I wasn’t too stoked about, but then it kicks over to regular footage. I liked the storyline, they did a good job at keeping everything a guessing game. Then when everything breaks you’re still not quite sure which way is up. So I have to give a shout out to Eubank’s and Frigerio on doing such a sweet job on the thriller part of the storyline.

The playthrough can be a little rough in spots. Because they’re trying to keep everything in the film a guessing game, some of the scenes get a little sporadic here and there. Which led to a few scenes being a little unclear as to what was going on. Other than that I really liked how everything played out and it held my attention all the way through till the end.

The cast is super small, but that’s one of the nice things about this flick. There’s a lot of mystery going on around everything during the flick and that small cast helps cut down on the clutter so you can just focus on trying to figure out what’s going on. I really liked seeing Fishburne pop into this one. I can’t say he does a lot in the movie, but yet he does if that makes any sense… Hopefully I didn’t lose you in that verbal circle, so lets get back on track. The cast did a good job, and Thwaites definitely did his part as the main star in carrying his weight in the film.

For having a budget of 2 million I think they made every dollar count. The special effects look really good. The camera work done by David Lanzenberg, for the most part was good. There’s a few times when I could have done without the style of filming they went for, but still, as the overall film quality goes it looked good. I’m just not a fan of shaking the camera to “add” action to the scene. Yes it’s suppose to make you feel like you’re in the moment, but in all reality… I wouldn’t have not been in the situation in the first place. “Oh look, a house out in the middle of nowhere… what could possibly go wrong here?” For me? Nothing because I would have turned around and went home… end of movie!