I went into this cold and thought it was a tonal mess. It was only when reading up on the film I see that the three segments or ‘transmissions’ were filmed by three different directors using different genres to tell their part of the story. I’m not sure what this approach added to the project, apart from confusion, as it was grating to see the film jump about the place with an in-cohesive narrative.
Anyway, we open with our heroine, Mya, getting out of bed. She keeps her bra on in bed but takes her knickers off. Fair enough. Mya is having an affair and is worried that she can’t get though to her husband to spin her lies due to a strange signal on her phone. The TV also displays strobing patterns and we suspect that this is ‘the signal’ of the title. And we’re right!
Mya heads home and meets up with her suspicious and controlling husband and his two friends. They are all pissed off that the can’t watch the game due to ‘the signal’ and tempers start to fray. Before long random people, including the husband's friend who happens to have a baseball bat, become homicidal maniacs and the killing begins.
Mya gets away but hooks up with a neighbour and the two head out to find that the city is aflame with murders happening all over.
The seconds transmission sees a couple setting up for a New Year’s party. Bodies have already begun to stack up with the wife either mental or in denial. This section is played for laughs and doesn’t sit well alongside the first which was straight out horror. This one goes on too long and there is too much farce on show with comedy clubbings, Vic and Bob Style.
The last section charts Mya’s journey to the station where she had agreed to meet her lover before the chaos started. Will she make it? Will ‘the signal’ be explained? And how come that disembodied head is talking?
This was a cheap looking, horror satire that overextended itself in terms of ambition and effects. Some bits were decent with others just looking plain daft. One chap gets his head cut off and it’s later reanimated so it can be interrogated. Good science! This was in the comedy section but it just looked daft.
If they had kept to the tone of the first section throughout this could have been a serviceable survival post apocalyptic thriller. Instead you were taken out of the action with the slapstick of chapter two and you also lose sight of your main character for 30 minutes which is never going to be satisfying.
You won’t know anyone in the cast but they were mostly serviceable and I liked Anessa Ramsey in the lead, despite thinking she was the waitress out of ‘Always Sunny’ for most of the film.
You could say this was a brave experiment in mixing genres but to me it was just a mess and a waste of time. A couple of good kills and getting hit by a frying pan is never going to sustain a 100 minute film.
The Tag Line : 3 Directors? More is less, 53%
No comments:
Post a Comment