The Signal (2014) - Of An Elaborate Plan.

★★★★☆

‘The Signal’ has a seemingly warm delightful opening, and an ending maybe not so mind-bending as that in ‘Dark City’ but it’d certainly stun in a sense. What’s told in between is not sophisticated but intriguing enough to keep one seated for an hour and a half. There’re violent yet elegant slo-mo sequences that I find mesmerizing and moving in particular. I don’t know. I’m quite fond of this stylish piece of sci-fi while most critics and viewers feel the opposite.

Hackers tracking another hacker, then they’re led to an abandoned cottage where they end up abducted by aliens, at least that’s what it looks like. When they come around however, told they’re contaminated by EBE (extraterrestrial biological entity) and being watched and studied like guinea pigs in a restricted barren location, Area 51 as they later believe so. Of course if you’ve seen ‘Dark City’ before, you might’ve figured, as the film runs half the way, that what they think it is can’t be what it really is at all. Obviously I chose to be not that smart, and that’s why I was able to enjoy it!

This film is more or less a reminiscence of the fact that we’re nothing but small stops of a big course; tiny parts of a giant machine; or say, elements of an elaborate plan, that’s completely out of our goddamned mind. We always feel like we know the whole picture. That we know what we want, and what’s best for us. But do we really? Whatever is happening is merely of cause and effect. What we believe is so worth fighting for, is in fact monkey business after all!