DVD review (region 1)
Directed by David Bruckner, Jacob Gentry, Dan Bush
Starring Anessa Ramsey, AJ Bowen, Matthew Stanton, Cheri Christian, Scott Poythress
Release date Out now

Signals from TV sets and other electrical appliances slowly fill the population with murderous impulses…

This offbeat sci-fi horror would make an ideal double-bill with 2006’s outstanding indie thriller Right at Your Door. Both movies are high-concept low-budget explorations of post-9/11 paranoia that owe a debt to Romero, and if anything The Signal is an even more surprising movie.

The film is split into three distinct segments (or 'Transmissions') with a different director at the helm (though, as the extras reveal, the other two directors were always on set to aid with camerawork). The first segment builds up a sense of escalating panic as Mya (Ramsey) returns to her apartment after a night of illicit passion with Jerry (Stanton) – only to find that her boyfriend Lewis (Bowen) has become irrationally aggressive. After Lewis kills one of his friends, Mya flees and finds that everyone in the apartment block – and seemingly the entire city – is slowly going mad...

It’s a tense, apocalyptic scenario, so it’s initially jarring when the second transmission is pitched as black comedy. In many ways, though, this turns out to be the movie’s best segment. It starts with a vaguely hysterical-looking suburban woman (Christian) waiting for guests to arrive at her New Year’s Party – despite the fact that she’s just killed her crazed husband with an air pump. Gradually other characters arrive at the apartment, each convinced that they’re sane and that everyone else is crazed. It’s amusing to watch each of the guests attempting a veneer of ‘normality’ in such nutty circumstances.

The final transmission is more of a romantic quest narrative which tracks Jerry and the geekish Clark (Poythress) as they try and make it to a mysterious place called Terminus in search of Mya. One barmy high-point sees Clark seek advice from a hot-wired severed head that just wants a cigarette.

The Signal is a pretty astonishing achievement, especially on such a low budget. Experimental, fun and very original, it’s part scathing satire on TV culture and suburban paranoia, and part shocking end-of-the-world horror that recalls such varied classics as The Quiet Earth, In the Mouth of Madness and Night of the Living Dead. There’s the occasional shaky supporting performance and not everyone will like the tonal shifts, but this is horror at its most wild and inventive.

The DVD extras put most releases to shame. On the commentary, the three lively directors take it in turns to chat about each others’ segments, and they provide a useful insight into indie filmmaking. In amongst the other filler-free ‘making of’ docs and genuinely interesting deleted scenes, the DVD includes Jacob Gentry’s festival-winning slasher short The Hap Hapgood Story - the movie that The Signal proper opens with in such memorable fashion. There are also four excellent webisodes (alternately funny and frightening) that show snapshots of other people affected by the signals, and the DVD comes with a cool lenticular cover. Matt McAllister

VERDICT: 8/10
Destroy your television set – but only after you’ve watched this DVD.

Click here to read the original cinema review.