THE SIGNAL (2007)

Directed by David Bruckner, Jacob Gentry and Dan Bush
Written by David Bruckner, Jacob Gentry and Dan Bush
Starring Anessa Ramsey, AJ Bowen, Justin Welborn and Scott Poythress

THE SIGNAL is an interesting movie in the fact that there were three directors on this each directing a different act or “transmissions” as they are called in this movie. Each act has their own unique look and feel about them which is an interesting way to make a movie and these three guys did a fine job directing and writing this movie. There are very few modern American made films that I have enjoyed but this was a nice diamond in the rough.

The story starts off with two lovers, Mya (played by Anessa Ramsey) and Ben (played by Justin Welborn). Mya has to return home to her husband, Lewis (played by AJ Bowen) before he gets to suspicious of her adulterous affair. And this begins our first “transmission” (directed by David Bruckner) entitled Crazy in Love. Mya returns home and shortly thereafter all hell breaks loose with the signal starting to get to people and make them go crazy and start killing people. Lewis is one of the ones affected and kills a friend of his. Mya escapes and hides out till mourning and then makes her way to Terminal 13 to meet up with her lover Ben.

Along the way she crashes her car and has to walk the rest of the way. Shortly thereafter the second “transmission” (directed by Jacob Gentry) called The Jealousy Monster begins and basically follows Lewis. He finds Mya’s car in front of an apartment building and we’re introduced to two new characters, Clark (played by Scott Poythress) and Anna (played by Cheri Christian). The majority of this act takes place in Anna’s apartment and is a big change of pace from the first act. There is a lot of dark humor here and had me cracking up throughout the act. Ben shows up and saves Clark from Lewis.

The third “transmission” (directed by Dan Bush) called Escape from Terminus begins and basically follows Ben as he tries to reach Terminal 13 to find Mya. Clark tags along but they are not the first ones to reach the terminal. Lewis has beaten them to it. Now Ben and Lewis have to fight each other to the death to find out which one gets to have Mya.

As I said before THE SIGNAL was a pretty nice change of pace from the usual crap like remakes and sequels and the like that America has been releasing here lately. To me what made this film work as the fact that there were three different directors who each added there on flair to the movie. My favorite act was the second one, with its dark humor and funny dialogue. I’m not sure if the film would have been that strong without this act. There is plenty of violent acts in this one with some decent amount of blood and lots of head wounds.

All of the actors did a good job and I would say that the stand out performance comes from Scott Poythress who plays Clark. I loved his character and what he did with him. AJ Bowen who played Lewis also did a pretty darn good job with his character.

I would definitely recommend this movie to anybody, especially those of you that are looking for something different. Those of you that are tired of the endless remakes and sequels that are coming out of Hollywood these days, look for this nicely done low budget film. You just might be surprised.

8/10