Along with an interview with director William Eubank, now check out Lisa’s review of his film, “The Signal.”
THE SIGNAL
Focus Features
CAST: Brenton Thwaites, Olivia Cooke, Beau Knapp, Laurence Fishburne
WRITERS: William Eubank & Carlyle Eubank and David Frigerio
DIRECTOR: William Eubank
PRODUCERS: Brian Kavanaugh-Jones and Tyler Davidson
GENRE: SCI-FI
Studio Synopsis:
Nic (Brenton Thwaites of The Giver and Maleficent), Haley (Olivia Cooke of Bates Motel), and Jonah (Beau Knapp of Super 8) are three college students pondering the future. Haley is relocating for a year, and her devoted boyfriend Nic and his pal Jonah are helping in the cross-country move.
But their road trip across the Southwest experiences a detour: the tracking of a computer genius who has already hacked into MIT and exposed security faults. Nic and Jonah have piqued this mysterious hacker’s interest, and vice versa. The trail heats up, provocations are traded online, and the trio find themselves drawn to an isolated area. Night falls, contact is made, and suddenly everything goes dark.
When Nic regains consciousness, he is in a waking nightmare. His friends are nowhere to be seen, but he is determined to locate them – in whatever form they may still be alive. His only lead is the man who now meticulously interrogates him, Dr. Wallace Damon (Academy Award nominee Laurence Fishburne). Damon voices concern for Nic’s safety, and tries to evaluate the younger man’s sense of reality. As the two match wits, Nic looks to break free…
A Focus Features presentation in association with Low Spark Films/IM Global of a Low Spark Films/Automatik production. The Signal. Brenton Thwaites, Olivia Cooke, Beau Knapp, and Laurence Fishburne. Casting by Mary Vernieu, CSA, and Venus Kanani, CSA. Costume Designer, Dorotka Sapinska. Music Supervisor, Aminé Ramer. Music by Nima Fakhrara. Production Designer, Meghan Rogers. Film Editor, Brian Berdan, ACE. Director of Photography, David Lanzenberg. Co-Producer, Bailey Conway. Executive Producers, Richard Rothfeld, Peter Schlessel, Lia Buman, Stuart Ford, Charles Layton, Jonathan Deckter, Neishaw Ali. Produced by Brian Kavanaugh-Jones and Tyler Davidson. Written by William Eubank & Carlyle Eubank and David Frigerio. Directed by William Eubank. A Focus Features Release.
Lisa’s Take:
“The Signal” is an engaging sci-fi thriller that goes to some pretty crazy places but stays grounded in the friendship of three main characters. It’s kind of genre-less. It starts out looking like a movie about an MIT hacker conspiracy, and then becomes a teenage horror flick. The girl’s boyfriend and his buddy want to go into a creepy abandoned house in the middle of the night and she says to him, “You know this is a stupid idea, right?” But they go anyway. Then, everything changes into shaky home videos and dark rooms and it starts looking like the “Blair Witch Project.” By now I’m scared, hiding my face, saying, No! Don’t go into the basement…! But of course they do, anyway.
Then, everything goes haywire. The three friends find themselves in some kind of government facility with stark, white walls and a cool, oddly evil Laurence Fishburne as their main point of contact.
And here’s where “The Signal” departs from any comparison with a typical sci-fi movie or a teenage horror flick. The acting is impressive, and even more so because Australian actor Brenton Thwaites and Brit Olivia Cook (playing boyfriend and girlfriend) sport impeccable American accents. Beau Knapp is the geeky friend, and Thwaites’ character, Nic, has to become the hero to save them all. But what gives the characters depth are the scenes that take us back to their real memories of friendship, jogging in the woods, and falling in love, and then we are thrusted back into this Twilight Zone, mind-altering reality where nothing is what it seems.
From this point on, I can’t really tell you what happens without spoiling the story. Basically, the three friends are trying to understand what’s happening, too, and as they do, they discover they have been given some curious superpowers.
This is director William Eubank’s second film (his first was, “Love,” also a space-sci-fi indie movie). He and his brother wrote the screenplay and their mom made the storyboards (I thought that was so sweet). “The Signal” has a plot full of holes ready to be filled with sequels. My only complaint about the movie is that the ending is very abrupt – perhaps intentionally so. I actually didn’t get the ending until about 5 minutes later. But maybe I’m just slow, because my companion figured it out about half way through (thankfully, she didn’t say anything).
“The Signal” is a fun and scary ride through unchartered territory, with relatable characters that are more than skin deep. You will keep wondering what will happen next.