Exceedingly stylish and creepily weird, this head trip of a film about three students’ attempts to track down an elusive computer genius is a mind-bending sci-fi thriller from American director William Eubank.

Nic (Brenton Thwaites) and Jonah (Beau Knapp) are college freshmen with a passion for hacking. When they embark upon on a road trip across America’s southwest with Nic’s girlfriend Haley (Olivia Cooke) they are following the clues laid down by rival a computer hacker known only as Nomad who has managed to expose flaws in their college’s security systems. Upon arriving at a decrepit shack in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night, things, however, start to get a little crazy. After blacking out, Nic wakes up in a government facility confused and isolated from his friends. Brought face to face with steely government agent Damon (Laurence Fishburne, entertainingly riffing on his wise-sage role from The Matrix), Nic finds himself in a waking nightmare struggling to grasp the reality of his situation. To say more would be to take away from the brilliantly sustained sense of discomforting strangeness that takes place from here on in.

A hit at last year’s Sundance, The Signal is the latest of an increasingly rich vein of outstanding, original indie science fiction to come out of the States in the last couple of decades including Cube, Primer, Coherence and Donnie Darko.

• The evening screenings of The Signal on Tue 31 March are part of our Cinébites deal: get a cinema ticket, veggie or meat cassoulet, and a drink (wine/beer or soft drink) for only £15.

Ticket prices: Screenings before 16:00: £5.50 full / £4.00 concessions. Screenings after 16:00: £8.00 full / £6.50 concessions.

---