The Signal (2014)

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Movie
German title The Signal
Original title The Signal
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 2014
length 97 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director William Eubank
script William Eubank,
Carlyle Eubank ,
David Frigerio
production Tyler Davidson ,
Brian Kavanaugh-Jones
music Nima Fakhrara
camera David Lanzenberg
cut Brian Berdan
occupation

The Signal is an American science fiction - Thriller by William Eubank from the year 2014 . The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was released in the United States on June 13, 2014. The cinema release in Germany was on July 10, 2014.

action

The students Nic, Jonah, and Haley are driving their car to Haley's new place of study. They are being followed over the Internet by a hacker who has not yet been personally known to them , who pretends to be a nomad and sends them live and snapshot images of their trip. The two tech-savvy men feel challenged and use an interception circuit to determine the alleged location of the hacker, who had previously successfully broken into the computer network of their internationally renowned university and made the act appear to have been committed by Nic and Jonah.

Out of curiosity and the desire to catch the talented hacker, they decide to interrupt the journey by making a detour to the address they have found. When they arrive there that night, they find a seemingly abandoned house. While Nic and Jonah explore the house, they leave Haley in the locked car. When they return to the car, alarmed by screams, the doors are open and Haley has disappeared. At that moment the young people lose consciousness. You wake up after an indefinite period of time in an institution building that combines features of hospital and prison . They have a tattooed sequence of digits reminiscent of an IPv4 address and are evidently held captive by people who are always dressed in protective suits . They explain to Nic that he and his friends have met aliens and may be contaminated as a result . Nic, who was previously handicapped, cannot walk and initially uses a wheelchair . He is forced to interviews that seem pointless to him by a constant team of supervisors. With Jonah, whom he does not get to see, he supposedly maintains contact via the ventilation system and discusses escape plans with him . He tries to implement this himself, sitting in a wheelchair and with Haley in the hospital bed in tow, but fails. Nic and Jonah feel physically weak, but it is difficult to describe the condition.

When Haley, lying in a coma , wakes up again and Nic falls out of his hospital bed, he has to discover that his entire legs have been replaced by complex, movable prostheses that give the impression of alien technology. The supervisors explain to him that they have not yet told him because they first wanted to gently introduce him to his new body condition. He is beside himself and this time he manages to leave the facility with Haley. It turns out that the complex is laid out underground in a deserted and prairie- like area. On the run on foot, by hitchhiking and later with a stolen truck , they find that they seem to have nowhere to cross the river valley that cuts deeply through the area. After one day, they meet Jonah, who confronts them with the fact that the cities and settlements that are drawn on the maps that can be found do not seem to exist at all. They believe they are in an isolated area and conclude that the Area 51 military base is said to have alien contacts.

While they are wandering around, the trio is already being followed by the team from the institution - still in protective suits. At the same time, Nic and Jonah are becoming increasingly aware that they are capable of superhuman strength through the prostheses implanted in them . They launch an attack on one of the seemingly official driveways to the site, which appears to be the only way out of the area and is guarded by armed units. Jonah sacrifices himself by smashing the concrete immobilisers (bollards) that fix the truck and shaking the whole earth with one punch in order to enable Nic and Haley to get ahead. He temporarily overwhelmed some of the armed men. It remains to be seen whether he will survive or be shot afterwards, but this is likely due to a previous hit in the chest.

The success of Nic and Haley's outbreak is short-lived, however. The team from the institution, still dressed in protective suits, blocked their way shortly before the only bridge over the river valley. A board of nails causes the truck to overturn. The seriously injured Haley is immediately transported away by part of the team and Nic is told that he will not see her again. Nic recognizes the name Damon on the protective suit of his main caregiver from the care team and correctly concludes that he has the supposed hacker Nomad (Damon backwards) in front of him. He congratulates Nic as a particularly successful combination of human will and extraterrestrial technology. Nic is once again aware of the strength he has gained, breaks through the barriers and runs across the long bridge at a speed that is impossible for humans to break through the sound barrier. His massive kicks cause the concrete of the roadway beneath him to tear up and collect dust. At the end of the bridge, he unexpectedly breaks through a wall that is not visible from this side and ends up in a dark room, as if behind a backdrop . Through the hole in the wall he can look back at the scenery on the prairie and is initially confused. Damon takes off the helmet of his protective suit and shows Nic that he is really not a person, but only a technical imitation of a person. It turns out that the whole environment is a replica of a limited small terrestrial landscape on an extraterrestrial base in space, far from Earth.

reception

The film received mixed reviews overall. On the Rotten Tomatoes film review website , 55% of the reviews are positive, out of a total of 66 reviews. The average rating is 5.6 / 10. In conclusion, it says: “Director William Eubank certainly has good ideas and impressive technical expertise; Unfortunately, The Signal wastes the potential in a poor story. ” Metacritic gave the film a 53% rating based on 30 reviews.

The film-dienst judged that the "low-budget science fiction film [...] definitely has some formal qualities", but that it is "not very innovative" in terms of content and irritates "with wild leaps in the plot". He also uses "the usual genre patterns". The film magazine Cinema described The Signal as a film "with an extraordinary visual language" that "deliberately avoids unambiguous explanations and creates a claustrophobic tension".

In Die Zeit it is said that Eubank sowed uncertainties instead of creating facts, and was “noticeably inspired by the Twilight Zone series, but also by directors like Stanley Kubrick and David Lynch, who spread an intangible discomfort in their films nightmarish anxiety ”. The set design is particularly praised in the Berliner Zeitung . Eubank also made a “very personal film” that was “less of an alternative to Hollywood than a calling card”.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Focus Sets 'The Signal' For Summer . In: deadline.com , March 7, 2014. Accessed March 8, 2014. 
  2. ^ The Signal. Film releases , accessed September 17, 2014 .
  3. ^ The Signal (2014). Rotten Tomatoes , accessed on September 17, 2014 (English): “Director William Eubank clearly has big ideas and an impressive level of technical expertise; unfortunately, The Signal fritters them away on a poorly constructed story. "
  4. ^ The Signal. Metacritic , accessed September 17, 2014 .
  5. ^ Sascha Koebner: The Signal (2014). film-dienst 19/2014, accessed on September 17, 2014 .
  6. ^ The Signal. Cinema , accessed September 17, 2014 .
  7. ↑ Anke Sterneborg: Siren songs from the computer. Die Zeit , July 17, 2014, p. 2 , accessed on September 17, 2014 .
  8. ↑ Philipp Bühler: A strong signal to Hollywood. Berliner Zeitung , July 10, 2014, accessed on September 17, 2014 .