Full Movie Reviews
Rating of
1/4
Potential Lost
Franz Patrick - wrote on 08/18/2008
The beginning was engaging because it was actually terrifying: a city gone crazy because of some mysterious signal eminating from telephones, television, and radio without any means of escape. I felt like I was right there with the heroine when everyone started to kill each other. However, after thirty minutes, it quickly went downhill because it couldn’t find its footing regarding its tone. The middle portion was labyrinthine because of two things: the violence being used as a form of amusement and the way that the filmmakers would play with the audiences’ perception. Regarding the former, I’m a fan of dark humour but this film had gone too far. At first it was funny but it quickly became downright degrading and borderline torture porn. If they had stayed with minimal violence and …
Rating of
3/4
Follow this signal
kcvidkid - wrote on 07/02/2008
If I may be so presumptuous, let me quote from one of my own reviews, that of "The Happening":
"...the (concept of the) unknown force effecting the entire population is quickly becoming overused."
At the time, I didn't realize that this statement would be proven so quickly! In "The Signal", though, the catalyst is more sinister and overt. While its origins are never explained, there's no time wasted on speculation about them. All we need to know is that there is a transmission causing deadly mass hysteria.
This presumably low-budget thriller is much better than "The Happening" for two main reasons. First, one of the "side effects" of the mass hysteria is hallucinations. Not only do the characters not know what is real or imagined, neither do we. That fact adds an entire …
Rating of
2/4
A lesson in unevenness.
FZero - wrote on 04/13/2008
God dammit is the PG-13 version of what I said after this one was finished. There's a shit load of wasted potential here, there is a good movie in there somewhere. It's like these three guys couldn't decide on what genre they should tackle and split the movie into three parts to try and satisfy everyone and the predictable thing happened, they failed miserably. Things got off to a promising start with the first third being dark, violent and just overall awesome, then everything went to hell. The middle portion ran the whole production into the ground with its attempt at campy comedy was such a sudden change of tone from which the movie never recovered. It seemed to drag on forever, even the overall better last part couldn't redeem what had just occurred. Maybe M. Night Shamhammer …
