Macabre…ish Horror Review: The Signal
The Signal, 2014/ 1 hr 37 min.
MIT students Nic (Brenton Thwaites), Haley (Olivia Cooke) and Jonah (Beau Knapp) go on a road trip to help Haley move, it puts a strain on her and Nic’s relationship because he is disabled and he doesn’t want to hold her back.
While at the hotel, Jonah and Nic discover a hacker known as Nomad, who almost got them kicked out of school for hacking MIT’s servers, has found their location and taunts them with strange emails. So they, in turn, track him to an abandoned house in Nevada.
After arriving at the house and finding it empty. Nic and Jonah, alerted by Haley’s screams, find her outside being lifted into the air. They too are whisked away with a flash of white light.
Nic, with numbers freshly tattooed on his arm, wakes up in a sterile research facility. He is questioned by a Dr. Wallace Damon (Laurence Fishburne) who informs him that he is there to help facilitate his new reality. The area he and his friends were found is the site of an extra terrestrial siting. Nic is shown proof of it in the form of video from his own camera. The hacker was not a hacker, the code was a signal.
Everyday Nic is questioned and tested by Dr. Damon and further infuriating him. He wants to see Haley and is sure he talked to Jonah through a vent. And the things he says are concerning.
Nic has questions about Jonah and Haley and is only told the Jonah wasn’t recovered from the house. Nic is becoming increasingly agitated and later tries to find and escape with Haley but fails, he is intercepted and the next time he wakes up, he discovers his legs have been amputated and replaced with prosthesis. And he is distraught.
With these new legs made from alien technology, Nic again attempts to escape with Haley to find they are in the middle of a desert. They hitch a ride with a woman named Mirabelle (Lin Shaye) who is a little out there. Then Nic literally chases down a trucker and steals his truck, leaving him on the side of the road.
Haley is also not quite herself. Everything is off though. The roads, maps, direction…it’s just not making any since but they do find Jonah. He seems to have answers the others don’t and it’s terrifying. Plus he has also been experimented on.
Meanwhile, Dr. Damon is out with a team, hunting them and everyone Nic and Haley so much as hitched a ride with is interrogated and executed.
When the three of them are cornered they will use their wits and upgrades to try to escape. They will find the truth stranger than fiction and escape impossible.
This sci fi thriller, directed by William Eubank is a thrill ride. It starts of slow and gradually builds to one of the craziest endings I’ve ever seen. This had lots of twists and I didn’t see most of them coming. Great effects and cast. This movie could easily have a sequel, just to answer questions because there are plenty. Very good movie!