Hey Jumpster,
Love that you are commenting on such an old, yet fantastic movie thread! Love love love this movie. Everything about it. Wish there were more just like this one.

As for the literal theory, makes sense. I really don’t remember where I landed in my write up or if I espoused one theory over any others. But from what I remember, it seems like a literal view makes tons of sense.

Did you jump over to my coherence thread and comment your thoughts there? Gotta jump start that thread again! Get the debates going again!!

Taylor

Uh no bro lmao. This isn’t some ‘found footage’ replay of micro cameras lmao. You’re like REEEEEAAAAAACHHHHHHHIIIINNNNGGG BRO.
Everything is pretty obvious, and there isn’t some hidden meaning that isn’t already right there in the movie.
3 kids get snatched by AI motherfuckers who run experiments on them. The experiments are done to each kid based on what would screw them up the most(legs to the cripple, arms to the hacker, brains to the girl who is more emotional, cause she is a female).
The NPCs hanging out were also kidnapped and experimented on. No the trucker wasn’t a kid, that makes no sense(for probably 20 reasons I could list, but the main one a kid couldn’t drive an Eaton 10 speed split shift transmission. And in that same argument neither could the main protagonist, but at least he probably knew how to drive a stick shift already being 20ish yrs old)
They’ve been doing experiments on people for a long time obviously.
Yes Damon was trying to get the kid with the legs to do something special, like running through the boundary of the sim, but there was no way they could have predicted a perfect scenario.
No way they have been doing this over and over. The movie took place in basically the same time frame as we see on screen, save for the time when they were knocked out to run experiments, and perhaps they were in some kind of stasis for a very long time before they woke up, we can never know that, except its obvious the NPCs have been hanging out in the sim for a long time, and not just put on ice(being that they are all crazy). None of the NPC peeps had any obvious implants, but they were probably messed up mentally.

The only thing that was unclear was if the AI robots were aliens, or were they made by men from the future, because of the numbers on the side on the sim ship(not alien handwriting)

1. The movie is a video log of compiled clips made by Damon from his observations both remote and in person as he manipulates human participants who have received various types of alien technology grafts – The girl has an almost undetectable graft in her nervous system that allows Damon to control her words and actions in which he determines her value to other people in the experiment as a measure of human emotion. Other grafts are more obvious and Damon observes the extreme anger felt when a coder’s perfectly good hands are replaced with what seems to be horrifyingly useless mechanical hands – but the anger doesn’t induce homicidal rage – the cow isn’t harmed, and he is allowed to escape, with Nic soon following after he too realizes his grafts – a realization that must be forced on him as he subconciously refuses to come to terms with what’s under the wheel chair blanket… when he tries to escape he MUST STAND to enter the code into the last door – the key pad is high, very high, much higher than other key pads shown earlier – Damon tries to induce the use of the super legs in Nic by escaping with the girl – but he must push Nic harder. 2. Damon repeatedly uses the same group of test subjects with substantial memory erasing and implants. The “flash backs” are not flashbacks, they are memory implants that Damon uses to establish base relationships between the people in the experiment. The longterm effects of doing so are evidient in the old woman and truck driver, both of whom are finally euthanized (the truck driver’s child like demeanor is evidence of how long he has been there – since he was a child) 3. The appendage grafts are in fact very dangerous due to the power to harm or destroy they grant the user. Therefore the whole point of the experiments are to find a way to have a human accept the grafts without inducing homicidal psychosis NOR egotistically overbearing God complex that loses any sense of fairness or compassion. Jonah is given several chances to constructively use his hands – in each case his anger at being the unwilling participant in what he thins are govt experiments imposes a mental block preventing him from creating the neural links to precisely use the fingers of the hands. We see Damon give him one more chance – a lap top placed precisely where he will happen upon it with only moments to spare before military guards overtake them. He must type quickly, precisely, on the laptop keys, intricate coding to hack out of the closed network and into a public domain… but again he fails and resorts to brute force with the fisted hand smashing the earth with earthquake like force. Again, such grafts received for any other reason than compassion would cause the user to become a villain in the end. 4. Damon finally gets it right, inducing Nic to accept his legs and use them, to run.. faster than a bullet fired from an M16… faster than the speed of sound – running to simply be with the girl he cares for – not to save her – she was just in a horrible truck accident and a medical helicopter going to a hospital is the best thing for her- he is running after her as he can’t bare the though of her feeling abandoned by him had he not tried – elements induced in him from her reaction to him breaking up with her to so she would be free of his handicap. 5. There are multiple scenes where Nic momentarily is confused by how the context, time of day, or clothing worn, has changed from one moment to the next – the break up scene (and the bridge in the background the movie concludes at a few days later) are proof they are already in the habitat since the very first scene. The abduction is staged to provide a scenario reasonable for the quarantine and forced isolation that occurs after. 6. Watch the movie three times – from the perspective of hidden micro cameras to which Damon observes and controls everything and you will see the true nature of the film.

Anyone have a theory on why all the red?

Oh and to the angry guy a couple comments up… this website is literally named ‘THE SIGNAL MOVIE EXPLAINED’
So, ahahahaha

there was a study that showed people tend to like a movie more if the ending was spoiled for them beforehand. i, however, really hate spoilers so i understand your frustration especially your remark about access/money. but you should still watch jacob’s ladder and i hope you enjoy it

I felt that Nick was concentrating so hard and so stressed out about his legs and sometimes it looked as if he was asking for help from God.

It came across to me as they “helped” Nick. But we as the audience are supposed to be thinking, ‘be careful what you wish for’.

The signal was actually Nick asking for help…the aliens picked up HIS signal.