The Signal

Review in a Hurry:  A mysterious broadcast is turning everyone who sees or hears it into bloodthirsty lunatics. Since that's everyone who doesn't live in a cave, this twisted low-budget shocker gets interesting awfully fast—but doesn't always stay that way.

The Bigger Picture:  It's neither a compliment nor an insult to call The Signal schizophrenic—that's just how it is. This smart-zombie apocalypse tale (affected people reason, speak and use tools—just very, very wrongly) is a single story told from three interleaved perspectives, with segments by three different writer/directors and vibes that lurch drunkenly from stoner comedy to high-strung horror.

The Signal is thus a hit-or-miss proposition, a chaotic experience that takes some time to sort out. To its credit, however, the hits linger longer than the misses. The opening segment—a view of the moment when things fall apart through the eyes of a woman who's not having the best day anyway—is a great tone setter, the tension ratcheting ever upward with every scene.

It's a bit jarring when that tension is instantly jettisoned in the second segment, but the giddy paranoia that ensues—a New Year's party that's like a demented Cheech and Chong farce starring bugged-out psychos with knives—feels so true to the kind of insanity The Signal is selling that it's impossible to ignore.

This scene is intense enough that you might want to leave when it's over. And maybe you should, since the closing bit can't match the buildup, and the film wears on you a bit by that point anyway. Like the titular broadcast, prolonged exposure could be enough to make you a little crazy.

The 180—a Second Opinion:  This isn't for everyone. The Signal wears its microbudget on its grainy, shaky digital sleeve, clumsy cutaways are often substituted for shots the directors would clearly rather have gotten, and the synth score is possibly more irritating than the broadcast that's driving everyone nuts.