BY BOB STRAUSS >FILM CRITIC

"The Signal," well, signals its intentions with a grubby torture-porn opening. It's just post-coital entertainment on the TV of a philandering couple, and what follows starts as a halfway intelligent and formally intriguing sci-fi thriller. But that soon devolves into more torture porn.

The not very original concept here is that some electrical signal from the tube - or cell phones, or radios, anything that broadcasts, apparently - turns whomever's on the receiving end into a crazy paranoid murderous person. This is basically a David Cronenberg concept dumbed down to a bunch of sadistic jokes, lacking any of the master's humane poignancy.

However, director-writers David Bruckner, Jacob Gentry and Dan Bush (I'll get to that in a minute) do get some interesting psychological riffs out of some of the killers, who keep trying to rationalize their own cruelty through their media-fueled delusions (and, more realistically, as self-defense). But the filmmakers fall into the trap of showing sequences from the addled's points of view, a tired what's-real/what-isn't game that even Cronenberg knew enough to chuck years ago.

And, unfortunately, "Signal's" ensemble of Atlanta actors isn't very good, so watching everybody try to make sense of going mad becomes more of a chore than a fascinating look at aberrant behavior. And so is watching women get exterminator-strength insecticide sprayed directly in their eyes and people's heads bashed in by the biggest blunt objects at hand.

Bruckner, Gentry and Bush each directed one of the film's three acts, and I guess they have different tones. But the whole thing is so consistently icky, gratuitous and not funny that you really can't tell one segment from another.

Bob Strauss (818) 713-3670
bob.strauss@dailynews.com

review>

THE SIGNAL 

>R: violence, sex, nudity, language.
>Starring: Justin Welborn, Anessa Ramsey, AJ Bowen, Sahr, Scott Poythress, Suehyla E-Attar.
>Directors: David Bruckner, Dan Bush, Jacob Gentry.
>Running time: 1 hr. 39 min.
>Playing: Area wide.
>In a nutshell: Three directors take on different stories about a low-rent town going homicidally nuts. None of them are all that talented, but there's an interesting idea or two.