Let’s be honest here for a second, I fucking love horror movies. But, like many other film-lovers of feminist/vegetegan persuasion, I can often get more than slightly irked with the apparently inherit misogyny and speciesism that horror movies seem to contain. However, The Signal is one movie I can watch without cringing, temper tantrums and cursing my lost bandwidth/money.
Do *you* have the crazy?
So, what exactly is this movie about? Mya (Anessa Ramsey) is a woman in an abusive relationship with her husband Lewis (A.J Bowen{this isn’t shown “directly” in the movie aka, he’s jealous, possessive, domineering and an arsehole although prior to the signal you don’t see him acting physically violent with her}) who seeks solace and an apparently equal and loving affair with Ben, played by Justin Welborn. A mysterious signal is transmitted through phone lines, television and radio that causes people to go fucking batshit nuts and psychotically violent. What I find so particularly interesting about The Signal is it’s done in three parts, by three different directors. Also, like one of my other favourite horror flicks The Last Horror Film, it has a good balance of plot to violence ratio and the introduction to the film has seemingly nothing to do with the film itself. Unless you’re willing to unpack it a little bit deeper and more on that later.
Back to the three parts, three directors thing – the introduction, I’ve learned comes from a short film entitled The Hap Hapgood Story which is your generic we-hate-women horror movie tripe of women in middle of no-where trying to escape from psychotic serial killer. This is a heavily edited version, even for a mini-movie, to be quite honest, I thought this bit was the worst in the movie. Cliche, stupid, hateful and yeah, you guessed it, my “favourite” m word …. misogynistic.
We are then transported to Mya and Ben’s affair. We learn that Mya’s husband is apparently an arsehole and Ben wants to run away and elope with Mya. Okay, so that’s not exactly in the movie, but picking at things is good fun – whether it’s a pimple, my butt or a movie. Ben makes Mya a mix CD and suggests they meet the next day (New Years Eve) and run away to the country side and start a new life. Fair call. So Mya starts her journey home, is harassed by a couple of creeps and arrives back at chateaus-de-buttpie. Her husband and his friends are trying to fix the telly which is transmitting a mysterious and fascinating signal, Lewis interrogates Mya to her whereabouts and tells her to have a shower. When Mya is just about to have a shower, her husband beats one of his friends to death with a baseball bat.
One of the best things about this movie is Mya is not your typical horror movie heroine. She has common sense. As soon as shit hits the fan, she does what most protagonists fail to in violent films and fuckin’ bails. The world it seems, has totally lost its mind and her apartment hallways have become a warzone. We leave Crazy in Love with Mya walking on her way to the Terminus Train Station to meet with her beloved laddie Ben, shutting out the world of the signal with the comfort of his mix CD. This section of the film is what I would call a “drama/horror” although wikipedia disagrees and terms it “pure horror” – (yeah, whatever that means) anyway, this section is made by a dude called David Bruckner.
We begin the second transmission following on with Ben and Lewis’ story, and I do believe this segment is called Jealousy Monster. This transmission has a totally different tone to Crazy in Love and would definitely have more in common with say, Shaun of the Dead than say, 28 Days Later. Ben and Lewis enter a ker-fuffle with each other and Lewis continues his crazy-ass-stalking ways and finds himself at Anna’s (Cheri Christians) and a now deceased Ken’s (Christopher Thomas) New Years Eve party. Ken and Anna were setting up when he tries to strangle her, she stabs him in the neck, killing him and continues to set up for her party as though nothing has happened. Her landlord/neighbour Clark (Scott Poythress) seems to know more about the source and meaning of the signal than anyone else so far. Shit starts to again, hit the fan as Lewis’ perception of reality comes under question when he kills two of Anna’s party guests. Lewis it appears, is so dangerously obsessed with Mya that anything and anyone who gets in his way must die.
Ben eventually comes to in the back of Lewis’ van and knocks him the fuck out and rescues Clark from being exposed to the signal for an extended period. This transmission has one of my favourite comedy-horror movie elements ever, because talking to and offering a cigarette to a decapitated head is just fucking genius. Ben is still on his quest to meet Mya at the Terminus station and this is where Transmission three begins. The name of which escapes me at present. This is where the movie got a bit shitty in my opinion, but a good conclusion seems to always be difficult. I hate the love story elements in most films, and The Signal was promising until transmission three. Ben and Clark are trying to get to Terminus and Clark is clearly delusional from his exposure to the signal and rambling on about the causes, the effects and why, why why why why they have done it. They find Mya tied to a chair staring straight into the heart of the signal like something out of Plato’s cave allegory. Lewis and Ben fight. The ending is fairly open – you don’t know if they got away and survived it all, or if they are all doomed. I hate that shit in movies. I always have, and I always will – to me, it just seems like lazy writing.
One of the things I managed to extrapolate from this movie was that maybe, just maybe, the signal could be seen as the patriarchy. Take for example, Lewis’ possesive and domineering traits are greatly exaggerated by the signal and becomes greatly violent as a result. He honestly believes that Mya is his property. Lewis can be seen as the epitome of “masculinity” under patriarchy – domineering, violent, possessive, misogynistic, obsessive; what a fucking stupid culture might in fact term an “alpha male”. Ben, on the other hand can be seen as an alternative to this “masculine” model, according to him in the movie, he can see through the signal, he knows it is a lie and he knows its used to control everyone’s lives to some extent. He shuts it off and rejects it. He rejects the role of a “traditional man”, whereas Lewis embraces it.
Anna and Mya can also be seen in a similar light. Even after Ken tries to strangle Anna with his own hands and she has to murder him with her own, she “wants” to keep working towards her party, the aesthetics of her house and wants the horrific nature of the situation to be swept under the rug in the same way hundreds of Western women refuse to see themselves as being oppressed by the so called “choices” they make. Mya on the other hand realises the fucked up nature of everything around her and rejects it, she marks her own path and she and her partner Ben are equals – they are both working towards the same goal of leaving Terminus and starting afresh. The mix tape made for her (albeit, by a male) represents an alternative to the current model of the patriarchy, the mix CD symbolises love, compassion, empathy and understanding unlike her relationship with Lewis which represents women’s relationship with the patriarchy - decidedly one sided, hateful, resentful and out of so called “convenience”. Mya’s hiding in the first transmission can also be interpreted as wanting to ignore the state of the world, the true horrors of being a woman living in a patriarchal society. There are a few other things I could say, but there are plenty of sites out there dedicated to spoilers and I really like this movie, so I won’t be one of them.
The physical appearance of the characters also has, in my mind, a bit of a symbolic element. Lewis and Anna embody the “ideals” of femininity and masculinity. Anna is long haired, wears skirts, pink sweaters and cutesy-wutesy stuff. She is almost a Stepford wife. Similarly, Lewis representing a stereotypical portrayal of masculine appearance is large in stature, wears desexualised simple workmans clothes and certainly does not go light on the facial hair. On the other hand, Ben and Mya are more androgynous in appearance, they are both similar in fashion sense, both have a short hair cut and fairly uniform features. Likewise, the relationship between Mya/Lewis is about as far from equal as you can get, while Mya/Ben is certainly more on a human-human level.
The Signal is not only brilliant as a horror movie, but also works well if you want to take a feminist interpretation of it. Not everyone will agree with my interpretation of course, however, I think it’s something worth considering. I mean, if people can synchronise Pink Floyd and The Wizard of Oz I think I can say that a mysterious signal that makes everyone go batshit and violent can be a represenation of the patriarchy.
Go watch it. Or I’ll come around to your house and stamp on all your toys.
