Lost Signal

Every once in a while, well these days more often than not, there comes along a flick so bad that after struggling through it, I feel compelled to sit down here and warn people against it. Dead of Winter aka Lost Signal is such a flick. It is so bad on so many levels that it seems a crime to invest in its 104 minutes. Wretchedly ridiculous, I found myself watching the clock with my finger hovering over the fast forward button like it was the trigger and the remote was some gun to end my suffering, my eyes glazed over frostbitten by boredom.

Kevin (Al Santos) and Tiffany (Sandra McCoy) are a young couple making the foolish plunge to move in together. On a New Year's Eve, as if to christen the event, Kevin talks Tiffany into snorting some meth followed by a shot of liqueur. When Kevin catches his pusher making moves on Tiff, he and Tiff leave the party abruptly. Before long, it becomes evident that the liqueur was laced with a hallucinogen of some sort and Kevin and Tiff begin to trip out in the woods suspecting someone is after them to do some harm.

Sounds intriguing enough, doesn't it? Well, don't be seduced to the lousy side with this one. Right from the start, you cannot help but despise Kevin. He's rude to Tiff's father. He's a piece of garbage for pushing meth, of all drugs, on his girlfriend, and he is the most pathetic Jack Nicholson wanna-be to ever violate celluloid. He even takes off running from perceived danger leaving his lady far behind in the freezing snow.

Dead of Winter, like so many B-horror releases in recent years, feels like some failed film school project. It's just a dumb movie that insults the viewer's intelligence by taking itself seriously. It was just so stupid!

Many people have made the experience that they were staying in a foreign city and went out in the night for a drink into an inn only 10 or 15 minutes foot-distance remote from their hotel. And although they were not drunk and thought that they did memorize the way from the hotel to the inn, they did not find their way back again. Somebody to whom this happened in Vienna has told me that for his great luck he finally found a taxi that brought him back to the hotel. When he entered the taxi, the cab-driver laughed and said: Are you sure that you don't want to walk? It's just around the next corner. When they arrived there, the cab-driver showed him on a map that the man must have walked more or less in circles for about an hour - and every time turning into the false last street before the hotel, as if he had been magically attracted by "an evil force".

The colleague who told me this episode also described that from minute to minute his fear was increasing. Now, imagine he had been drunk. Then, it could have happened that he would not have been able to wave a cab towards him, as busy as Vienna is during the night. He might have ended up on a parking-bench, or even worse in the Vienna-river or in a Danube canal. Orientation means the semiotic mechanism to move our body safely through a labyrinth of contradictory information which has first to be deciphered in order to serve to reach the goal of our movements. If this semiotic mechanism collapses, which means that the signs cannot be deciphered anymore, we are not only lost in the outer, but also in our inner world.

"Lost Signal" (2007) shows this complete loss of information step by step, caused by LSD or a related drogue which seems to paralyze practically wholly the capacity of orientation of the two protagonists. Their own visual perception starts to create monsters, the words heard at the cell phone have completely changed their meaning and sense. When orientation is gone, the human is no longer a semiotic being, because with the orientation he has lost its environment. Therefore, he becomes his own environment, projecting demons created by his brain into the vacuum of where the environment used to be. Although I cannot judge if the world of appearances caused by LSD is correctly depicted, I can tell that the movie does a magnificent job. This movie did not go out of my head (as many thematically related films did), it has this "mystical" glue that sticks to your brain.

Dead of winter, also known as Lost Signal, follows Santos and McCoy, a young couple who are unknowingly slipped a high dosage of LSD at a New Years Eve party. As the drugs start to take effect, and the couple leaves the party, they start to become paranoid that someone is out to get them. After a car accident leaves them stranded in the woods, their trip continues gaining momentum as does their fear.

I found this movie by total accident in the wee hours of the mourning. I was bored and needed some background noise while I was studying for finals. Before I knew it I was drawn in and hooked, not able to take my attention away from the movie. I've seen quite a few movies with the "Bad Trip" scenario, and hated most of them, but what makes this movie stand out from the rest is there is no madman, no monster, you are simply viewing two people who have no clue that they are having an extremely strong LSD trip. The actors who play the two mains do an excellent job of portraying this terrifying situation as well, both are very believable during the entire movie. I really had a good time watching this film. It turned out to be one of those random "it came from Netflix" gems I find now and then when sleep isn't an option. I highly recommend giving this movie a chance, it is very much atmosphere driven so don't expect ton's of story or over the top special effects. If it wasn't for the super cheesy special effects, that caused me many times to be reminded that what I was watching was only a movie due to how silly they were most of the time I would of given this film a bit higher of a score. But none the less I feel its worth your time.

6/10 - Ritualistic The Liberal Dead http://liberaldead.blogspot.com

I wish I could choose a number lower than 1 = awful. Whom ever is responsible for this garbage...go kill yourself. Its over.

2 million budget my left nut. It makes Blair Witch Project look like Ten Commandments.

Try making porn dude. You don't need to have creative talent for that.

See if they need a gopher on a real movie and try to pay attention to how they do things.

I don't want to be rude. But seriously, it really really sucks. Do they have a "movie making for dummys" book? It might be a little above your head but give it a try. Seriously, you have nothing to lose. Or maybe get an internship at IHOP.

This movie is not a slasher-horror which is what I like about it. Instead of just hacking up a bunch of teens, the filmmakers actually made a story about how bad drugs are and how scary it can be to be messed up on them.

I thought the movie looked way bigger than 2MM and the acting was great. I would recommend watching this movie if you see it on TV or on DVD. It is better and more original than most movies I have seen lately.

I also thought Brian McNamara from the show Army Wives was great as the sheriff and as a director. I look forward to seeing his next directorial project.