Macabre…ish Horror Review: The Signal

by Kimberly Walker October 27, 2021

The Signal, 2007/ 103 min.

Signals are out everywhere, tv broadcast signal, cellular, land lines…all of them and just in time for New Year’s Eve! The signal isn’t the only thing acting weird, so are people. People are mindlessly and aggressively attacking each other and running away.

Mya (Anessa Ramsey) is late getting home after a rendezvous with Ben (Justin Wellborn) and her abusive husband, Lewis (A.J Bowen), is home with some friends, watching the game when the signal went out. And suddenly beats one of his friends to death with a baseball bat.

And at 1 in the morning, the entire building seems to be awake and either killing each other or running for their lives. The next morning, nothing is better and is definitely worse, bodies are scattered everywhere.

While Mya is trying to escape, she runs into one of Lewis’s friend’s, Rod and Ben comes to her building, looking for her, but she keeps missing him. And so she takes off in search of him. And on the way are different kinds of crazy. No word yet, but some of these people could be zombies or maybe just figments of imagination.

The pure chaos and slaughter reminds me of Murder Party, part slasher film, part black comedy. But it’s not purely chaotic, the movie does a good job showing the macro view of this nightmare and then the micro, so you can really observe how insane it actually is.

This is graphic and gory plus Jim Parsons (Chadrian McKnight) who is lacking in any kind of self awareness and sense of decorum. He is crass and offensive (non pc) and I still thought he was funny. Rod’s (Sahr Ngaujah) performance was great! His monologue, the way he emotes…I really enjoyed watching him.

The pacing of this movie is pretty fast and changes direction suddenly, which can be off putting but it is definitely not boring. Pair the sometimes crazy characters with the sometimes offbeat music, makes this movie a little bonkers. This movie was really good the second time!