The Signal

The Signal (15)

USA 2014  97 mins  Dir: William Eubank  Starring: Brenton Thwaites, Olivia Cooke, Beau Knapp, Laurence Fishburne

William Eubank follows his ultra-low-budget Angels and Airwaves flick, Love, with a slightly bigger-budgeted indie science fiction head-scratcher. It takes a swift sprint down silly street after the big reveal, but contains enough effective moments to entertain anyone who enjoyed the likes of Primer or District 9.

We begin in familiar indie relationship territory with a set-up that threatens to turn into one of those terrible mumblecore flicks at any moment. MIT student Nic (Thwaites) suffers from a degenerative condition that already has him on crutches. His girlfriend, Haley (Cooke), is transferring to Caltech for a year and he fears this will be the end of their relationship. With best bud Jonah (Knapp) along for the ride, the trio hit the road to California. Fortunately, a bit of plot has already kicked in. Nic and Jonah are being taunted online by a sophisticated hacker calling himself Nomad. When they get a fix on Nomad’s location, which turns out to be along their route, they decide to pay him a visit. Things promptly come over all Blair Witchy as the threesome conduct a wobblecam investigation of a spooky abandoned shack, whereupon Weird Shit starts to happen and they black out. Nic awakes to find himself imprisoned in what seems to be a huge underground government research facility. Laurence Fishburne then turns up in a hazmat suit and introduces himself as Wallace Damon, who heads the ‘transition team’. Apparently under the impression that he’s still in The Matrix, he deals in a rich repertoire of evasions, gnomic utterances, bizarre questions (“How many toes do you have?”) and stock conspiracy flick dialogue (“You don’t know what you’re dealing with!” etc), all of which serve to postpone the explanation of what the hell’s going on. But when Damon announces that the threesome have made contact with an EBE (that’s an Extraterrestrial Biological Entity – aka an ET with knobs, or other reproductive organs, on) and need to be contained to avoid contamination, Nic wisely doesn’t believe a word of it.

More than this, it would be unfair to reveal, suffice it to say that subsequent developments take us into Chronicle territory. There are several stylish and chilling scenes along the way, but The Signal unravels somewhat towards the end, becoming noticeably less cerebral as it edges into the mainstream. This has its own compensations, in that Eubank proves himself remarkably adept at handling action – notably a terrific truck-chase and a tense checkpoint sequence. So while it never gets quite as wilfully daft as, say, Darren Aronofsky’s pretentious load of old cosmic cobblers The Fountain, you may find yourself somewhat underwhelmed by its ultimate destination. Eubank, meanwhile, has set out his stall effectively enough to ensure that he follows in Neill Blomkamp’s footsteps by being entrusted with a much bigger budget for his next project.