Well it's enjoyable, its interesting and as an experiment in filmatism it is a unique little science fiction film that ultimately succeeds in providing it's viewers, however scant that audience may be, with a few laughs, some entertainment and some interesting ideas.
While I am a fan of Stephen King's work specifically the Dark Tower Saga, I did enjoy his book CELL, to which "The Signal" has been compared. Outright I was under the assumption that this was going to be some second rate King rip off and I was proved only half wrong.
While the basic premise seems directly lifted from King's novel, the execution here is what grabbed me as a viewer. The story is told in three parts, each part labeled 'TRANSMISSION I', 'TRANSMISSION II' etc. but here is how this film is unique, each part was given to a different writer/director to tell in his own way, the only common thread being the characters, their relationships and the basic premise of the story. This is what makes the movie worth while, if a bit uneven tonally (specifically TRANSIMISSION II hilarious but a bit jarring from the melodrama of T I & III).
I enjoyed how it played with the conventions of who is crazy who isn't and who is stuck somewhere in the middle, but it could have done without some of the mind-fuckery that has become so popular in this post Matrix SCI-FI world of ours. My one big gripe is a bit of nit pickery. My big gripe is the name of the city in which this narrative(s) of ours take place, Terminus. It's one thing to read the word Terminus in a book or short story but to actually hear people saying it as the name of their homes is another altogether. I'd prefer something as broadly vague and Cronenberg-ian as "The City," but that's just me.
Overall The Signal gets: 23/31
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