Friday, July 17, 2015

The Signal

An earnest effort...



A challenging and frustrating film, I offer "The Signal" five stars for effort, but three stars for execution.  At its best it evokes the brothers Strugatsky "Roadside Picnic" and Andrei Tarkovsky’s "Stalker," the film based upon it.  Much of the rest of the time this 2014 film, directed and co-written by William Eubank, is a hodgepodge of well-known tropes and discordant homages to less impressive material.

Worth the time of a serious science fiction film buff, if only for a look at the good bits.

PS That reminded to buy a copy of the latest, post-Soviet, translation of the novel, and put the Tarkovsky film back in my Netflix DVD queue.

Update: So the movie, Stalker, was not as good as I remembered.  The uncensored novel, on the other  hand, was better.