The Signal is a film that tries to say so much about such a variety of topics that it really ends up saying nothing about anything. It reminded me of a Neill Blomkamp film minus the A-list talent. Of course, Laurence Fishburne, an exceptional actor, plays a fairly large part in this film. However, his A-list presence feels like a more bearable version of Al Pacino in 88 Minutes (if anyone even remembers that disaster.) In other words, Fishburne is brought in by the filmmaker as an attempt to hide the fact that no one knows what they're doing. The film does present one or two interesting ideas but even those are so poorly done and overblown that the film feels more like a parody of a sci-fi film than an actual sci-fi film. I felt like I was watching the lost skit from Amazon Women On The Moon pushed to 95 minutes. I'm not trying to sound harsh because I'm aware that director and co-writer William Eubank and co-writer Carlyle Eubank had a hamstring budget and not a ton of support. However, this is a very bad film which makes it so that I still have to hold the Eubanks's feet to the fire.
The film stars Brenton Thwaites, who has been in Oculus and Maleficent this year and continues to make me question how he's getting so much work, as Nic. Nic is a man who must struggle with crutches who is also a wiz at the computer arts and gets a mysterious email from a hacker who previously caused a university scandal with which Nic and his buddy Jonah (Beau Knapp) got blamed for. Not exactly sure what to do, Nic and Jonah decide to push him back. All of a sudden, Nic, Jonah and Nic's ex-girlfriend Haley (Olivia Cooke) find themselves in isolated rooms at a mysterious supposed research center. Nic is interviewed by Damon (Laurence Fishburne) who seems intent on keeping them in this isolation for the indefinite future.
Going further into the plot would be giving away too many of the all too predictable twists and turns. Fishburne gives a fairly creepy performance but his role could had been played by anyone with no real difference besides the fact that other actors wouldn't have tried so hard with such a badly written character. As for the rest of the cast, they feel as if they just came out of a high school acting class with a really bad teacher. I can't fully blame the cast, though. The Eubanks spend all too much of the time trying to give the audience the allusion that there is some kind of actual mystery. It would have been significantly more effective if the Eubanks showed more of what's so creepy and weird about this place and why the virus these three friends are infected with is so bad. However, the audience gets only one or two brief glimpses of what makes this place so bad and no real explanation of what this virus does or why it's so awful. Before the audience knows it, it's back to the question of "what does this mean?," which can be found out in the first five minutes.
This film is a perfect example of why less is not always more. The film tries to build suspense out of virtually nothing and just ends up coming across as incompetent and rudimentary in the process. It's far from the worst film of 2014 but The Signal is extraordinary dull and too often obvious in the most eye rolling way possible to ever enjoy or get engaged with.
(1 out of 5 Stars, The film is rated PG-13 for some thematic elements, violence and language)
No comments:
Post a Comment