SPOOKTOBER V: DEATH’S DEVICE

An anthology of sorts, all connected (no pun intended) by one theme/effect in particular, a signal, is divided into three intermissions, each of which gives us a glimpse of how this mysterious signal turns people mad and activates this murderous behavior.

As tends to be the case with this sort of film, one tends to be better than the other, with the first and final one being my faves. The second film does feature some good moments of dark humor, a feature shared by many of the others, along with a high-contrast cinematography that gives the movie a grungy aesthetic. While I didn't fully enjoy it, it didn't completely lose me either. There was a guy…

Death spread via a television transmission? Remember when someone tried this in Halloween III?

The Signal was referred to me by a friend who was surprised I hadn’t seen it, as we were talking about the narrative style (multiple points of view of the same event) of another more recent horror film Weapons. So yeah, The Signal features three points of view to a single event: a transmission that turns people crazy on New Years Eve. Weapons this ain’t.

In “Crazy In Love”, a married woman leaves the home of her boyfriend to discover that almost everyone has become hostile and murderous. I got Romero’s The Crazies vibes, and this segment of the story is by far the best of…

The first time I saw this was right after it came out and I was absolutely blown away by it. It still mostly holds up today even with the lack of surprise you get by whatever happens next.

Told in 3 segments (transmissions), we have the story of 2 people engaged in an illicit affair when basically the end of the world suddenly starts to happen. Its not 3 separate stories, but there are definite shifts in tone of the same story from one segment to the next. There are some well done suspenseful parts balanced nicely with some really funny parts and the cast is top-notch. I love AJ Bowen, but I’ve never wanted to punch someone in the…

"I know where she is, and I'm going to find her, and free her from the burden of being the used-up adulterous whore that she is".

Probably the best $50,000 you'll ever see on screen, 2007's The Signal gives a solid nod to the Canadian flick Pontypool, with a nefarious signal being broadcast across the city of Terminus, turning citizens into murderous lunatics. Or zombies. Or something. You'll work it out.

A trilogy of "transmissions" by 3 separate directors via 3 separate viewpoints, The Signal finds the community of Terminus on New Year's Eve being transformed by a televised audiovisual broadcast, with people reverting into a "fight or flight" condition, the streets and hallways filling up with the bodies of…

A mysterious signal is beamed into all digital frequencies that makes everyone into psychopathic mass murderers capable of surviving and raging after normally very fatal wounds. The film is divided into three acts as usual, but each one is also differentiated by directors similarly to Four Rooms (1995) and focused on different characters in the story. It's certainly as bloody as films get, and the twist on the rage epidemic is unique and fairly original, or at least original to me. The violence is gory, but honestly there just seemed to be a lack of acting skills in just about everyone involved. That being overlooked I do think this one was on to something great, but it's a pretty big…

The Signal is a strange low budget mixture of horror and comedy that did not sit right with me. Ultimately it just felt bizarre, and just like the characters I as a viewer could almost feel myself losing my mind as it went on.

A strange signal gets broadcast one day to television screens and radios that makes people who watch or listen to it completely homicidal. We follow one woman and the two men who are both looking for her as they struggle to get back together and survive the horrible things going on everywhere in the town of Terminus.

This one was such a bizarre experience, a very strange mindtrip that tried to juggle horror and humor and…