The Signal (dir. William Eubank)
As Aristotle said, “Nature abhors a vacuum and also hamfisted stories about the emotions of undergrads,” and oh god was he right about that. The Signal, like too many genre movies, tries to build audience sympathy for its teenage characters by depicting them at their hormonal worst. Nic (Brenton Thwaites) and Haley (Olivia Cooke) are at a crossroads in their relationship, and along with their friend Jonah (Beau Knapp) they decide to take a detour on their road trip to find a mysterious hacker in the New Mexico desert. The entire first third of the movie is filled with many TEENAGE FEELINGS as Nic drives his relationship with Haley onto the rocks.
To heighten the effect of all of these FEELINGS, Eubanks employs shaky-cam mixed with extreme closeups, causing the viewer to feel woozy and confused even before the movie finally gets to the goddamn point: after an apparent alien encounter, our three hapless protagonists find themselves trapped underground in a research facility led by a mysterious scientist (Laurence Fishburne). What’s going on? Why are they being experimented on? All of these questions are left unanswered by an ending that combines a hilariously inappropriate dubstep cue with multiple incoherent plot twists (and also steals from a vastly superior science-fiction movie from the late 90s). The Signal clearly intends to blow your mind; to say it misses the mark is putting it mildly.
The one upside to watching this bad, bad movie is its IMDB message board, which is a goldmine (WARNING: spoilers in these links, in case you care about spoilers for a garbage movie). In this thread, dr_feelgood96 rhapsodizes about the future. This thread proves that flamewars can be started by anything, even a throwaway remark about goldfish. And about the movie’s mysteries, shaneac1 says:
At the Devil’s Door (dir. Nicholas McCarthy)
Nicholas McCarthy’s first movie, The Pact, was an uncommonly assured debut. Mostly dispensing with plot, it instead functioned as a delivery vehicle for sustained creepiness. It’s the kind of movie that indicates the arrival of a talented new voice in horror cinema and with At the Devil’s Door McCarthy delivers on that promise in spades.
At the Devil’s Door starts with a traditional horror plot: A real estate agent (Catalina Sandino Moreno) meets a mysterious girl in an abandoned house, and as a result she and her sister (Naya Rivera) are drawn into a world of strange occurrences – and possible demonic possession. But apart from a surprising mid-film twist and a misjudged ending that goes on for too long, At the Devil’s Door avoids the usual plot developments (or really much of a plot at all) and instead uncorks a series of astoundingly unsettling set pieces. Smartly, McCarthy builds tension from repeated images and sounds: a red coat, clothing hung over a mirror, a whispered voice from off-screen, burn marks around door frames. These details accrue an almost totemic power that supersedes the plot, and laser-precise camera movements play as much of a role as the characters do. In spirit, if not exactly in style, At the Devil’s Door evokes Argento at his oneiric best. This is the creepiest movie I’ve seen in ages; McCarthy has serious chops and I can’t wait to see what he does next.