{"id":15284,"date":"2015-10-06T09:08:47","date_gmt":"2015-10-06T13:08:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/?p=15284"},"modified":"2015-10-06T09:08:47","modified_gmt":"2015-10-06T13:08:47","slug":"the-signal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/the-signal\/","title":{"rendered":"The Signal"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"The<\/a>One of the oddest – but most intriguing – scifi films I’ve seen recently<\/strong> was the 2014 movie, the Signal<\/a>. It is a small-budget film that premiered at the Sundance Festival last year and seems to have gone to DVD soon after. I picked up a copy recently at a nearby HMV and watched it over the weekend.<\/p>\n

It stars Laurence Fishburne as the only big-name actor, while\u00a0the main role is played by newcomer Brenton Thwaites.<\/p>\n

The film reminded me somewhat of George Lucas’s first big film, THX-1138, in its minimalist production and sets. But they’re not otherwise alike. THX-1138 was overwhelmingly white: in The Signal the sets are dingy, drab and dreary.<\/p>\n

It also uses some of the shaky-cam techniques that made Blair Witch Project standout but has been overused ever since. But not enough to make my eyes hurt and head ache, and reach for the remote to turn it off.<\/p>\n

The movie takes three young university students on a cross-country journey during which you learn they were accused of hacking a university server, but apparently cleared somewhat. As they drive through the American southwest, they decide to chase down the hacker who was really behind the attack, using the IP of a message to locate him\/her.<\/p>\n

All of which takes some time. Probably half the film is a road trip\/coming of age movie in which the backstory slowly emerges and the characters are gradually developed. There are some technical elements thrown in to remind viewers there is some science in here, however\u00a0thin.<\/p>\n

I was almost tempted to turn it off and watch something else, something more exciting, but the DVD case had a photo of Fishburne in a biohazard suit, so I knew there was more to come.<\/p>\n

When it does arrive, it’s a strange blend of Kafka, THX-1138, ET, The Shining, and other popular cultural and literary themes. I won’t spoil the movie, except to say that it isn’t ever really clear for most of the remainder what is going on. In fact, until the final scene you never quite get the point. It keeps throwing hints at you that never quite stick and make you wonder more.<\/p>\n

I can’t get it through my head that it’s supposed to be a metaphor for love and emotion<\/a>\u00a0as it is claimed to be. When I think of that notion in scifi, I think of Spock and Kirk.\u00a0But it does explain\u00a0why the director put so much vacillating about love and feeling, especially in the first half. There’s some love-redemption going on, sure, but it didn’t strike me as the foremost theme.<\/p>\n

Stay with it. It’s not the best scifi film I’ve seen, nor the most well-constructed story and the pacing is too slow at the start. Still, it redeems itself towards the end with some action, suspense and surprises. And like I said, it makes you think.<\/p>\n

My final comment is that the last shot, that final glimpse that explains it all, is too fleeting. It should last another minute or so, just enough for the audience to take in the whole picture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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One of the oddest – but most intriguing – scifi films I’ve seen recently was the 2014 movie, the Signal. It is a small-budget film that premiered at the Sundance Festival last year and seems to have gone to DVD soon after. I picked up a copy recently at a nearby HMV and watched it over the weekend. It stars Laurence Fishburne as the only big-name actor, while\u00a0the main role is played by newcomer Brenton Thwaites. The film reminded me somewhat of George Lucas’s first big film, THX-1138, in its minimalist production and sets. But they’re not otherwise alike. THX-1138 \u2026…… click below for more \u2193<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[213,7],"tags":[423,392],"class_list":["post-15284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-and-the-arts","category-film","tag-film-reviews","tag-scifi"],"a3_pvc":{"activated":true,"total_views":10554,"today_views":0},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15284"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15287,"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15284\/revisions\/15287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}