The Signal | 2007 |104 mins | Directors – David Bruckner, Jacob Gentry and Dan Bush

“They just decided to start killing people. I mean what do I do? I never killed anybody before, what do I do? I’m not gonna fuck around.”

Too much television is supposed to be bad for you, although whoever said that probably died years ago and never saw an episode of Dexter or Deadwood. In The Signal watching television for even the briefest of moments literally damages the viewer turning them crazy with paranoia. People begin to believe everybody else is out to murder them and should be dealt with first. They also become prone to delusions and seeing things that aren’t really happening.

The Signal is divided into three parts, each with a different director; David Bruckner directs Transmission 1, Jacob Gentry Transmission 2, and Dan Bush Transmission 3. Each part tells a different aspect of the story while moving it forward at the same time.

Transmission I Crazy in Love

It’s New Year’s Eve and Mya (Anessa Ramsey) is heading home from an assignation with her lover Ben (Justin Chadwell). In the car park she encounters a man begging for help and bleeding from a stomach wound. Wary at first, Mya offer him assistance, until another man appears carrying a knife, forcing her to flee. As she enters her building she hears arguing coming from some of the rooms. Mya’s husband Lewis (AJ Bowen) is suspicious and asks her where she’s been, who she’s been with and what she did with them. Mya makes up a story about going for a drink with a workmate.

Lewis has a couple of friends around to watch the ball game, but there is no transmission, only a garbled series of images. One of his friends Jerry is play swinging a baseball bat in the living room. Lewis stares into the TV then turns on his friend demanding he put the bat down. Lewis takes the bat off him and accuses Jerry of almost killing his wife. Jerry tries to walk away, but Lewis bashes his head in with the bat.

These opening sequences are tense and minimalistic, turning everyday items into objects of terror. Mya flees her apartment barefoot, but slides about on the blood-strewn wooden floor. A man is walking through the corridors casually killing people with a pair of garden shears as if he was pruning his roses. Mya manages to hide in a friend’s apartment. The following morning she puts her headphones and listens to Ola Podrida’s cover of Joy Division’s ‘Atmosphere’ while walking past the corpses strewn around the corridor.

Transmission II – Jealousy Monster

While the first part of The Signal plays it straight, Transmission II turns into a black comedy, albeit one with a gory climax. Anna (Cheri Christian) sits at the dinner table talking to her husband about cancelling their New Year’s Eve party. Nothing unusual there you might think if it weren’t for the fact that Ken is clearly dead. Next-door neighbour Clark (Scott Poythress) drops by because he needs to borrow some black bags to dispose of a few things, like a decapitated head. Clark notices Ken’s fatal condition and tries to get Anna to understand he’s gone. A flashback shows how Anna and Ken were a sickeningly adorable couple, all lovey-dovey until he stared into the television then started to strangle his wife. Anna shoved the pump she was using to blow up party balloons into his neck, though she still refuses to believe she killed him and is carrying on as if things were normal.

The increasingly deranged Lewis turns up looking for Mya, who abandoned her car outside Anna’s building. Lewis is convinced Clark and Anna know more about the whereabouts of Mya than they are letting on. What follows is like a twisted, evil sitcom as Lewis, Anna and Clark meet the one guy in the world who would show up to a New Years Eve party during an apocalypse. Jim Parsons (Chadrian McKnight) is so stupid he is completely unaware the world is falling apart. Jim is at least considerate enough to have brought a bottle of booze to the hootenanny and is hoping he can get laid. Ideally Jim is hoping to improve on one of his previous party experiences, “I made out with the dog.”

Transmission III – Escape from Terminus

The final part switches back to all out horror as Ben and Clark race through an increasingly desolate urban landscape to find Mya, while being pursued by Lewis. AJ Bowen’s performance is genuinely intimidating hinting that Lewis was always capable of this kind of rage, even before the signal unleashes it. Dan Bush directs Transmission III using very little dialogue and keeps the action moving right up until the ambiguous ending. Wordless flashbacks appear briefly to haunting effect showing moments from Ben and Mya’s relationship, from their first meeting to happier times before the world went to hell.

The Signal created a fair amount of buzz when it screened at the Sundance Film Festival in 2007. A straight-to-DVD release in the UK, it is deserving of a wider audience and should please fans of the post-apocalyptic genre or Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later (2002).

Kevin Sturton