Directed by William Eubank. Cinematography by David Lanzenberg.
The low budget Sci-Fi flick is a fantastic genre filled with quite a few
ripsnorters. You can't bury the story in special effects and CGI. Take one of my favorites '
Primer', which was made for $7,000. There's an attention to the detail of each shot and the film language I don't see in huge budget pictures. 'The Signal' continues this positive trend with an atmospheric piece of cinema dulled by an anti-climatic final reveal.
You want to tell the writer, "Yeah, we already got it, they're not on earth anymore." And after you tell him this he goes, "Surprise! They're not on Earth!" And you reply, "We know! Like we got that 20 minutes ago. Stop pointing it out." It doesn't ruin the movie at all. Just an observation.
Below Lanzenberg uses the sun as foreshadowing.
This is a prelude to the abduction scene. The bright light is one of two main motifs in 'The Signal'. So your question might be what does this accomplish? How does the foreshadowing make the movie any more enjoyable? I like to believe subliminally we make connections and infer meaning even if we are not aware of it. Like the use of yellow in 'Jaws' as a warning. In this case the light comes to represent a lack of control over our destiny. A divine power who, as Bela Lugosi eloquently put it in 'Glen or Glenda',
pulls the strings.
The framing of the scene above jumped out as I was watching it. Fishburn sits far back in the frame, the table is used to exaggerate his distance and give the shot dimension. Without the table it would be Fishburn against a white wall and we'd lose the sense of distance. Here, we're put in Nic's position so we can empathize with his character.
In contrast the shots with Nic are uncomfortably close up. He fills the frame which brings an intensity to his character's situation.
Now you could do this scene with all long shots, maybe with both characters in frame at all times. Kind of like the shot above this paragraph. It would change the feeling and meaning of the scene. The emotion would be antiseptic and it would feel clinical. Instead of us feeling Nic's frustration, we might see a man unhinged. Anger tends to look crazy from a distance.
The second major motif is the doorways. From the shot above to the shots below the doors of the facility feature prominently in major set pieces.
It's all a bit harrowing and adds to the feel of the world. so many choices, with no idea what's behind each door. The motif plays a major role in giving 'The Signal' it's ominous feel. The characters are lab rats navigating a maze with no idea what's around the corner. Nic doesn't even know where escape leads, even though he's obsessed with it.
We can play with the concept of free will. If information is hidden by the aliens and certain doors are locked and off limits, they've crippled Nic's free will. Isn't this what causes him to mentally break? He can't choose anymore, like the rat, he has to run the maze as they've constructed it.
Recommended. 'The Signal' combines the best parts of 'The X-Files' (the dreamy questioning of what is truth) with a anxiety inducing vision of humans as test subjects.
