Dark Signal focuses on two women: Kate, a single mother, and Laurie, a late night DJ as their lives intersect in ways that they couldn’t imagine with the ghost of a dead woman trying to warn them of danger. Imagine if What Lies Beneath had less character development, was made by a fan of M. Night Shyamalan’s lesser works and torture porn horror. It was hard to distinguish whether bad direction or bad acting could explain the peculiar depiction of character traits.
I have no idea how Dark Signal ended up in my queue. Possibly because it sounds similar to the descriptions for Pontypool or Banshee Chapter, but these movies are completely dissimilar. It isn’t awful although a lot of mediocrity and promise does leave one with a bitter taste in your mouth as the movie unfolds, and it gradually dawns on the viewer that it is never going to get better than it is at that moment.
Dark Signal’s narrative is framed around my least favorite trope, How We Got Here, with a scene taken from the end of the movie then backtracking to an earlier point. As the movie unfolds, we keep waiting to arrive at that scene to understand what we saw earlier, but once you do, while the denouement was enjoyable, it is equally frustrating when I realized how much effort was put in to a task for it to just go up in smoke.
I was initially excited that the movie was dominated by women leads, but that excitement soon waned when Kate appeared to be written as dumber than a post for the majority of the movie and act extremely odd in the way that she talks to her kid. I went from psyched that Dark Signal gave us a mixed race family to oh no, that kid doesn’t stand a chance in life. There is a difference between having financial difficulties and having absolutely no common sense, but the writers did not seem to think so. The good news is that at the eleventh hour, it turns out that she has that primal mama bear thing going for her so if she wants to get through life, just constantly threaten her and her son’s life.
Also because there aren’t many characters, there aren’t many options regarding who will be the killer, and I did suspect the right person, but thought, “No, why would they use The Equalizer 2 rule of bad guys” and dismissed my guess. Dark Signal has a misunderstanding moment that makes zero sense when one character mistakes another for the killer even though that person has no blood on them and frankly does not fit the profile of a possible killer. Sure it ratchets up the tension, but it gets us there in a moronic way, especially since the accuser was hella creepy to be casting false accusations.
Dark Signal is only ninety-eight minutes long, but it feels like an eternity. Initially the breathtaking panoramic shots of the countryside seem like a perfect parallel for the story about how to get in touch with the spiritual realm: by getting in touch with your environment. That visual concept is more of a daytime bookend to the story instead of a consistent theme developed throughout the movie, which is understandable since a majority of the movie is shot at night, but then it dawned on me that they thought pretty standalone visuals would be enough to mollify viewers, and they probably did not give a lot of thought to the way that the majority of the film looked.
Dark Signal also didn’t give much thought to its supernatural component. One character appears to be possessed by a ghost otherwise this character never speaks. No one takes this person to a hospital or a priest, but to the nearest relative. Please do not do this in real life if you can’t get this person on the phone unless their living relative is an exorcist. How does this improve the situation? You’ve simply changed locations. I did like the twist that explains how everything could happen, but it was too little too late, and in retrospect, I should have guessed it. The coolest aspect of the movie was when it had nineteen more minutes until the end, and the characters noted that it was twenty more minutes until sunrise.
If you don’t mind spoilers, please keep reading. I loved how no woman saw it for the producer, including the psychic who left him hanging when he tried to give her a high five. Also Cinzia Monreale, who plays the psychic, was underutilized. She was probably the best actor in the whole movie, and she can do that elegant scarf drapey thing that seems to be instinctual with most people, but is not as easy as it looks. Just for a second, realize that an entire family got killed in one night then realize that Dark Signal underplayed that shit and get mad. A prodigal son and his father were within feet of each other, and the writers just thought of them as more cannon fodder instead of emotionally exploiting that situation because they saw it more like a twist and never thought of the larger emotional ramifications. What the hell? They wrote it, but only thought of it as a clever way to play a shell game with the killer’s identity. What a missed opportunity! Shame! What happened to the babysitter? I can assume that the killer murdered her, but photos or it didn’t happen. I’d like to think that she was so freaked out, she just slowed the car down enough to toss the kid out of the car without hurting him then kept driving. How can you afford a regular babysitter, but not a one-time purchase of a flat screen TV? Does Rent-A-Center exist in Scotland?
Nitpicky, inconsistent moment: if the killer meets women on the Internet, and Laurie was in a committed relationship, how did she become his target and long-term obsession? I think that Dark Signal added the supernatural portion as an afterthought to jazz up the psycho killer, but by prioritizing the killer, the writers should have profiled him better because he really sounds like two different killers instead of one. I also don’t buy that Laurie could be fooled for so long. Read The Gift of Fear. It seemed like a bit of a reach, and she wasn’t a fool like Kate so I didn’t buy it. I did like the sackcloth headgear. Anyone can be scary with sackcloth. Kate can fight!
I have mixed feelings about Dark Signal. It is definitely not a good movie. Although it dances close to the line of being a bad movie, it never goes over it. It is an uneven, mediocrity with flashes of unfulfilled potential that could easily be revamped and remade into a better film given the right kind of filmmakers. It is neither hot nor cold so Jesus would definitely spew it out of his mouth. Skip it.