Who you gonna call?

Like Neill Blomkamp’s District 9 or Duncan Jones’ Moon, a new mystery drama from young cinematographer-turned-director William Eubank, The Signal, sits comfortably in the rarest of genres: the low-budget sci-fi—not horror—thriller. His follow-up to festival hit Love, which explored the same isolation and will-to-live themes as Gravity, and in outer space, too, but did so three years ago and for a micro-fraction of the blockbuster’s cost, begins in the world of low-level computer hackers but soon expands into something much more sinister and dangerous when some college students get lured into the desert. Yeah, bad idea.

The film debuted to a rapt audience as part of Sundance’s Park City at Midnight lineup back in January, where I first witnessed its arrestingly elegant visuals and unsettling implications unfold in a completely believable world with characters that felt like neighbors and friends rather than actors swinging for the fences. Science fiction can be at its best, its most human, when it is born of a smaller budget. The narrative becomes more internal and more thought-provoking in what is left out—what isn’t painted over frame after frame with CGI plaster.

Oscar nominee Laurence Fishburne and Twilight‘s Sarah Clarke lead an otherwise unknown cast in what could be, dollar-for-dollar, one of best bets at the movies this summer.

Focus Features sends out The Signal on June 13. focusfeatures.com/the_signal

ALSO THIS MONTH
JUNE 6
Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt in Edge of Tomorrow.
JUNE 13
Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum in 22 Jump Street.
JUNE 27
Mark Wahlberg in Transformers: Age of Extinction.