HometownSource Blogs

Hello again internet! I’ve been meaning to write up a movie review, but quite frankly there really hasn’t been much to write about lately. Part of my usual weekly routine is to hit up a theater and do what I consider to be a dinner and a movie night. This consists of watching a movie, drinking a ‘medium’ Pepsi that somehow is the size of a milk jug and eating a large plastic tray of chips with a vat of what can only loosely be described as ‘cheese’. While the theaters definitely have oceans of Pepsi and vats of cheese sauce to unleash on me, there hasn’t really been much in the area of decent movies it seems.

A few weeks ago in a fit of movie withdrawal frenzy I went to go see ‘Horton Hears a Who’. Nothing against the movie, I just usually don’t like to go see kids movie. I know I know they make them palatable for people of all ages. It wasn’t too bad and I actually got a few laughs out of it. It’s a far cry from being the next Citizen Kane, but it was something.

So I get to thinking there must be something out there that’s slipped below the radar. So I start digging around and I stumbled across ‘The Signal’. I have to say I’m quite pleased with what I found.

The premise of the story is this. It takes place on New Years Eve in a city called Terminus. They don’t really get into the how or why it happened, but for some reason a mysterious signal is being broadcast out on every conceivable piece of transmission based media. Radio, cell phones, television have all been compromised. People aren’t really sure whats going on, but they can’t seem to stop watching/listening to it. Eventually everybody starts going crazy, this taking the forms of extreme paranoia and violence. Some manage to avoid being drawn into it and others figure out ways of clearing it out of their heads. It pretty much ends up being a survivalist zombie type movie, except instead of being chased by zombies the characters are chased by zombies wielding weapons, but they can’t really tell by looking who’s good and who’s bad.

I bet it really sounds like all the makings of your basic run of the mill B-movie horror film. There’s some interesting aspects to it though, the movie is split into 3 sections each written by a different writer. This may sound familiar for those of you that have seen ‘4 Rooms’, From Dusk till Dawn, and Grindhouse. Although Grindhouse probably isn’t the best example since it’s actually 2 non related movies. In The Signal the plot follows a singular path, but each of the three scenes have their own feel to them.

The downside to the movie for me would be that some of the acting is pretty weak, the first scene especially. Also if your easily offended and over the top gore isn’t really your thing you should really pass on this one.

My conclusion if you’re a big fan of classic horror movies such as Evil Dead II I would definitely check it out. It has it’s fill of cheesiness, but at the same time there’s some really interesting aspects to it and genuine hilarity.

Check out more on the film over at www.imdb.com