The Signal (2014)
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Three MIT students on a road trip find themselves caught in a high-tech nightmare involving an enigmatic hacker and an extraterrestrial mystery.
The story
Three MIT students, Jonah, Nic, and Haley, embark on a road trip to California, a journey strained by Nic's limited mobility due to muscular dystrophy. During their stay at a hotel, they are targeted by a hacker known as NOMAD, who taunts them with ominous emails and hacks their devices. After tracking the hacker's IP to an abandoned house in the Nevada desert, the group investigates and is suddenly attacked by an unseen force. Nic and Jonah are knocked unconscious, and the group's journey takes a terrifying turn into a mysterious underground facility.
Full plot (contains spoilers)
After being knocked unconscious near an abandoned house in Nevada, Nic wakes up in a sterile underground research facility with a numerical tattoo on his arm. He is told by Dr. Wallace Damon that they encountered an extraterrestrial biological entity. While Nic is restrained and unable to move, he hears Jonah talking to him through a vent, claiming his body feels weird. Nic eventually discovers his legs have been amputated and replaced with advanced bionic prosthetics. He manages to break out with Haley, only to find Jonah later, who has had his forearms replaced with similar alien technology. The trio discovers they are in a desert canyon, which they speculate is Area 51. After a violent confrontation at a military checkpoint where Jonah is fatally wounded, Nic and Haley escape into the desert. They eventually encounter Damon again, who reveals himself as the hacker NOMAD. Damon explains that Nic is the 'perfect integration of human will and alien technology.' Nic uses his bionic legs to sprint across a bridge, breaking through an invisible barrier to reveal that the entire facility is actually an immense alien spacecraft docking at an alien world.
- First release year
- 2014
- Runtime (minutes)
- 97
- Production countries
- United States
- Original languages
- English
- Directors
- William Eubank
- Writers
- William Eubank · writer; Carlyle Eubank · writer; David Frigerio · writer
- Cast and characters
- Brenton Thwaites · Nic Eastman; Laurence Fishburne · Dr. Wallace Damon; Olivia Cooke · Haley Peterson; Beau Knapp · Jonah Breck; Lin Shaye · Mirabelle; Robert Longstreet · James; Jeffrey Grover · Gil, Gas Station Clerk
- Genres
- science fiction; thriller
- Themes
- logic vs. emotion; adversity; humanity; identity
- Tone and mood
- mysterious; stylish; disturbing; slow-burn
- Setting
- Nevada desert and an underground research facility in the modern day.
- Premise and plot tags
- science fiction; techno-thriller; alien abduction; disability; friendship
- Content notes
- PG-13
- Reception
- The film received mixed reviews, with critics praising its visual style and technical expertise while criticizing its narrative construction and plot twists. It holds a 60% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 54 on Metacritic.
- Reported review scores
- Rotten Tomatoes · score: 60% · review count: 87; Metacritic · score: 54 · scale: 100 · review count: 34
- Production trivia
- The film is described as a Twilight Zone–style story drawing on Plato's Allegory of the Cave.; The film is intended as a modern interpretation of the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz.; The name 'Damon' is 'NOMAD' spelled backwards.
Film metadata comes from the open sources listed in Credits & Contact. Catalogue details may be incomplete.
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