Jacob Gentry

  • The Signal (2007)

    The Signal (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, August 2021) Even though there have been many, many horror movies about electronic signals turning people crazy, I still hold out hope that, some day, someone will manage to make a worthwhile movie out of it. Even after watching The Signal, I’m still waiting. A hodgepodge of ideas badly stuck together, it does have some residual interest… but it doesn’t take a long time for the usual horror silliness to undermine the ideas. In true genre fashion, writers-directors David Bruckner, Dan Bush and Jacob Gentry seem more interested in gore and cheap scares than in exploring any of the ideas they may have started with. It doesn’t really help that the film is structured along three shorter films, and that much of the film focuses on TV signals, probably as a visual device. While the result is much narratively tighter than most anthology films, it’s still a disappointment. There is a good case to be made that the filmmakers were interested in showing people being violent to one another, and that the TV thing was just a thin justification on top of what they wanted to do anyway, and I’d go for that… except that stripped of its rationale, The Signal is another one of those cheap horror films that seem to find inherent worth in violence, which is where I disagree. Instead, it feels like so many forgettable films, the madness of its characters poorly motivated and ultimately leading to nothing but more red syrup spilling out. It’s striking that such a great idea, reflective of our ambivalent relationship with technology, hasn’t managed to produce at least one great horror film where the metaphor is made literal. Maybe some day…

  • Synchronicity (2015)

    Synchronicity (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, January 2017) As far as low-budget time-travel science fiction thrillers go, Synchronicity is pretty much an average example of the form. It maximizes its limited budget through a limited cast of characters, a few locations, screenwriting ingenuity and cinematography dark enough to hide plenty of details. Time travel is nearly always a good low-budget SF premise, as the magic of movies allows for big SF ideas on next to no extra investment. The flip side, unfortunately, is that most time-travel thrillers tend to repeat themselves. Weirdness accumulates until we realize that the main character has been meddling in his past and we nearly always have to run through the same scenes twice. Writer/director Jacob Gentry plays the game competently but can’t completely avoid the lowlights of the form. It doesn’t help that the characters are largely stock (the genius scientist hero, the wacky sidekicks, the femme fatale, the corrupt businessman) and that Synchronicity seems very fond of its noir backdrops without quite making the most out of it. At least Chad McKnight is suitably sympathetic as the lead character, with Brianne Davis bringing the heat as the woman who may or may not be an instrument of the antagonist. It’s comfortable, watchable and satisfying without quite going beyond the basics. There are a few better examples of the form out there (Prisoner X, ARQ, even Paradox) if Synchronicity isn’t quite enough.