Hey, everyone. ”Moriarty” here.

Right now, I’m excited about any horror film that isn’t a remake or a sequel. They may not all end up being good, but I plan to reward each and every original horror film with my purchase of a ticket, even if I see it at a press screening first. I am losing my patience with the people who are killing one of my favorite genres, and the release of a film like THE SIGNAL pleases me enormously.

Hiya Moriarty!

I got a chance to see a screening of THE SIGNAL this past weekend at Dragon*con in Atlanta, and thought I'd drop a mini-review in your inbox to add to the positive buzz floating around the movie on your site. I'm going to focus on a few different things since the plot has been hashed and rehashed on here before.

First off, I want to warn everyone going to see this (the crew said it'd be released probably in Dec or Jan) that it may not be the film you're expecting to see, and the trailer is only revealing half of the tone. It also doesn't follow the same storyline as Stephen King's "Cell," a fact I was worried about going into the screening since I'd just read "Cell" a few weeks before. Even though I knew that this movie had not ripped off the idea from King (I believe "Cell" was released after production of this film), I was still worried that if the movie was great that it'd inevitably be compared to "Cell," especially if Eli Roth ever got his film version off the ground.

Thankfully, "The Signal" is a great movie with only minor flaws, and its second act takes such a dramatically dark humorous turn (yet still bloody gory), that by the movie's end you can no way draw any comparison to King's novel (except on the basic levels of the premise). The second act is also where my expectations were shattered, not in a bad way, mind you, but the tone took such a left turn that it took several minutes to get my mind straight and say - "OH, this is going to be THAT kind of flick!" Imagine Pulp Fiction being smashed together with an apocalyptic-zombie-style movie and you'll have an inkling of the tone.

And the humor, my God the humor! Some of the best dark humor you will have heard in a LONG time. The crowd in Atlanta was eating up every line!

All-in-all, this was definitely a movie to see, especially given the indie nature and low budget, which you could not really discern from watching it. The actors and directing were all top-notch. Everyone needs to get out and see this one when it arrives in theaters!