Curiosity drives a young girl and her boyfriend to step into a forbidden place, despite all the warnings that have kept others away. Together, they discover a hidden world filled with unimaginable secrets.

‘SPOILER ALERT’

MIT students Nic Eastman, his girlfriend Haley Peterson, and their best friend and fellow Jonah Breck have a tight bond. The trio spends a lot of time together, from study groups to having fun, and they have each other’s backs through everything, including Nic’s disability, which forces him to use a crutch to move around due to a weakness in his legs.

One day, Haley is excited to get an opportunity to study at Caltech University for a year. She shares the good news with her boyfriend Nic, who, despite being terrified to lose his girlfriend, manages to suppress his real feelings and congratulates Haley, as he doesn’t want to stand in the way of her future.

The trio then discuss the major news, and the boys offer to drive Haley to California and make a road trip out of the journey, where they can spend some fun, and quality time, enjoying each other’s company and giving them the opportunity to have a proper and extended farewell.

Haley gets on board with this sweet gesture, packs all her belongings onto her old car and the trio sets off on an epic journey that promises to make lifelong memories.

The group takes turns driving and stops at the major attractions on their route to refresh, visit, and enjoy themselves while growing even closer. During the nights, the trio finds average motels and shares a room to save money and only splurge on fun and memorable activities.

As the days go on, Nic’s bravado starts wavering and the idea of separating from his best friend and the love of his life begins to weigh on his mind. As a result, he starts acting noticeably distant and tries to figure out if their relationship can survive the distance.

One night, sleep evades Nic and after tossing and turning around for quite some time, he gets up and sees that Haley has fallen asleep next to him while watching a movie on her laptop as Joshua sleeps in the twin bed next to the couple.

Feeling restless, Nic checks his phone and is surprised to find a message, at such a late hour, from a familiar account named Nomad, who has previously hacked the MIT server, along with the trios’ personal accounts, setting them up to take the fall and almost getting them expelled from the prestigious school.

Nic immediately wakes Joshua to update him on the recent developments and the men start chatting with the mysterious man, looking to find what his end goal is and threatening to locate and expose him for framing them and almost getting them expelled.

This triggers the intruder however and it backfires as Nomad warns that if they come looking for him, he will own them. To show them how serious he is and to make matters worse, Nomad then hacks Haley’s laptop camera and sends them live footage of their motel room.

Panicked, the boys rush to shut off and close the laptop. Then, not to disturb Haley, the boys lock themselves in the bathroom, partner up, and start writing a code to reverse-track their hacker. After some hard work, the boys manage to track down the hacker, to a location in Nevada.

The next morning, the boys push everything they found out, to the back of their minds and the trio sets off on their way, enjoying each other’s company. Nic once again tries to suppress his true feelings as he tries to be fully present and treasures the moment. After traveling some distance, Joshua is shocked to receive a traffic cam picture of Haley’s car from Nomad and is unnerved.

Nic checks out the picture and suspects that Nomad is taunting them, seeking recognition for his next-level skill, and becomes overwhelmed by the level of intrusion into their privacy. Haley then tries to calm down the situation and advises the boys to stop provoking the mystery man.

The group takes a break after driving a few more miles and stops to get some gas and refreshments. Joshua uses this opportunity to pull Nic aside and propose that now that they know the identity of their hacker and his location, they should seek him out by going to Nevada, which Nic turns down, suggesting that he wants to make the trip about Haley.

The group continues on their way to California and makes a few more stops for some sightseeing and quality time. After a couple of days of utter bliss, as the trio stops for a break, Nic goes to get some refreshments and Haley uses the opportunity to talk to Jonah about why Nic has been distancing himself from her, but finds no answer.

Then, moments later, Haley approaches her boyfriend, but he unreasonably snaps at her and upsets her into going for a walk to clear her mind. Having a sudden change of heart, Nic then approaches Jonah and informs him that he is on board with the idea of seeking Nomad out so that they can put a stop to the madness once and for all.

To add salt to injury, before Haley can calm down, Nic approaches her on her walk, explains that he doesn’t want to hold her back due to his disability and that he also wants to protect himself from potential heartbreak, and unexpectedly ends the relationship right then and there. Haley, no longer wanting to hear any of his comforting words and explanations, returns the necklace he gave her as a sign of his undying love and storms away, to once again try and clear her mind.

Haley gets only a few minutes to cool off and soon joins the boys back in the car. There, Haley turns down the boys’ offer to drop her off first before heading to Nevada and insists that she wants to join them in their search for Nomad, as she too was his victim.

Hence, the trio drives to Nevada and follows the IP address of Nomad to a shabby, dark, and abandoned house in the middle of nowhere. The eerie-ness of the sinister-looking house is augmented by the darkness of the surroundings, which spooks the group to suspect that something is wrong.

However, despite Hayley’s warning, the boys believe that it’s too late to change their minds, and back out. They instruct Haley to lock all the car doors and windows, turn off the headlights, and jump out of the car with anticipation.

As the boys cautiously march towards the house and get a better view of how dilapidated it is, they start to wonder if the IP numbers got mixed up and led them to the wrong location or if the tech whiz Nomad had tricked them by bouncing his IP address off a random location.

The boys get to the door, and as they look through the broken windows, they confirm their suspicions that the place is indeed abandoned. They decide to check out what’s inside anyway and hold on to each other as they enter the sinister-looking house, with their torches in hand.

Inside, the boys find random items like a crib, chairs, and tree branches strewn everywhere. They boldly go through the house, hoping to find any clues, and proceed to the basement when they fail to find anything concrete.

Just as they finish the stairs to the basement, the boys notice server tracks across the walls and get closer for a better inspection. However, this is interrupted by an ear-splitting scream from Haley outside, which jolts the boys to run as fast as they can and help her. When the boys reach the car, they are utterly confused to find it empty, with all four doors open, and the radio blaring.

The boys run around, screaming for Haley at the top of their lungs. However, after looking around for their friend and failing to find her, the boys notice a peculiar thing levitating towards the sky, run to check it out, and are terrified to recognize that the levitating thing is an unconscious Haley. Before processing this information, the boys are struck by a sudden white light themselves.

Sometime later, Nic wakes up to find himself in a hospital gown, strapped to a wheelchair and with a number tattooed on his wrist, in what looks like a wide hospital room. Moments later, Nic is terrified to realize that his weak legs have gone completely numb and are now unable to support his weight whatsoever.

Before Nic can process this, a couple of men in hazmat suits wheel him out of the room and take him to meet their boss, Dr. Wallace Damon, who is also draped in the hazmat suit, and who explains that Nic is in a research institution. The doctor turns on the official tape recording and prepares to have a one on one session with the confused Nic.

The doctor then asks Nic his name and after making sure that Nic’s memory is somewhat intact, Dr. Damon explains that Nic and his friends have come in contact with an Extraterrestrial Biological Entity, which called EBE, but actually, they are still trying to learn more about and are quarantined at the institution for further research and observation. The doctor adds that the hazmat suits are necessary to protect the staff of the institution from possible alien contamination.

Nic is then denied his request to see his family and his friends for fear of possible contamination and taken back to his room, where he spends his day in isolation, except when he is transported around the facility by the staff for his regular session with Dr. Damon.

One day, during Nic’s transport to the interview room, he tries to take in as much information as he can about the environment outside of his room. He watches cautiously as he is taken by several white rooms being cleaned and fumigated and takes note of the time from the clock on the wall. Then, just as he is wheeled around a corner, Nic is shocked to see Haley, in a hospital bed, attached to many equipment, and begs his handler to let him see her to no avail.

During the session, Dr. Damon explains that Haley had been rendered unconscious during the initial attack and promises that everything humanly possible is being done for her. Then he dismisses Nic’s pending questions and goes straight into asking him random questions like how many fingers and toes he has and if he’s from Earth.

Then, Dr. Damon asks Nic about the signal he and his friends received from Nomad and proceeds to show him a video from the dilapidated house in Nevada, which shows a strange figure hiding in the shadows and watching as Nic and Jonah enter the house. The doctor uses this footage as proof and declares that Nomad is not a simple hacker but instead an alien, looking to take over Earth.

Nic doesn’t know how to react or process this and continues to try and make sense of it during his isolated daily routine. One day, as Nic tries to reflect on everything that happened, he hears a friendly, strained voice greeting him, follows it, and locates it as coming through the vents.

Nic then quickly recognized the voice as that of Jonah and excitedly wheels himself to the vents to talk to his best friend. Jonah then shares that he too is in a locked room, that his body feels abnormal, and that he has overheard the staff discuss their case and figured out that they are being held in an underground facility for fear of spreading the disease. The best friends agree that something unruly is going on there before Jonah abruptly drops the call.

Then Nic tries to register in his mind everything around the facility, any time he gets the opportunity to leave his room, and makes a stunning discovery that none of the clocks are working.

One day, during the one on one session, Nic starts bombarding the doctor with many questions about the suspiciously broken clocks

and refuses to cooperate with the research team, unless he is taken to see Haley, who is still unconscious and kept in her room. After giving Nic different puzzles to complete and making sure that his critical thinking is intact, the doctor grants Nic his wish.

Nic is only allowed to see her from afar, but he is still really content to see with his own eyes that she is alive. he then rushes to read her hospital card but starts to panic after seeing that nothing is written on it, until the doctor calmly reasons that they are just observing and waiting for her to come out of the coma, hence the no treatment plan.

In the next few days, Nic uses all the equipment around his room, discreetly modifies them, and uses them to collect some data and sequence. He then employs Jonah’s help through the vents to make sense of the sequences. However, Nick is disturbed to hear his best friend share that he had just seen the staff pour something into his drink, to which he associates the newly developed weakness in his arms.

Elsewhere, in the facility, an unrelated experiment on a cow gets out of control, setting the alarm off. Chaos erupts just as Nic is on his way to see the doctor which derails his travel as the shocked research staff leave him to wander while they run around making sure everyone and everything is ok and most of all that they haven’t been breached.

Nic uses this opportunity to explore around the floor of the facility and goes to the bathroom but only for a moment before being recovered by his handlers. However, when the light comes back on, Nic is utterly shocked to see all the walls of the hallways have been completely ransacked and destroyed, including the walls.

The staff then leads Nic to the interview room for his session with the doctor, which soon turns sour as Nic picks a fight with Dr. Damon. Then the topic turns to Nic’s conversation with Jonah through the vents, which the doctor admits he listens to but shocks and confuses Nic by revealing that they never recovered Jonah from the site of the incident in Nevada, which starts to play on Nic’s mind as he doubts himself and his mental wellbeing.

In the next few days, Nic processes everything he’s been told and he’s seen in the facility and decides that enough is enough. He then discreetly manages to leave his room to go to Haley’s hospital room, attach her bed to his wheelchair, and starts wheeling away carefully through the twists and turns of the many corridors of the institution.

However, Nic is caught just as he struggles to open one of the last doors and is brought back inside with Haley. Following his near escape, Nic subconsciously starts reciting and living through the best times of his life with his best friends, as a way of coping with the stress of his new predicament.

Then Nic finds himself inside a hospital room, sharing a sweet farewell with Haley, who comes in and out of consciousness frequently. Angered and confused by everything, Nic suddenly attacks the couple of staff inside the room and knocks them out.

Then, as Nic proceeds to check on Haley, he gets the surprise of his life as he discovers that both his legs have been substituted by an alien prosthetic limb, which seems to prove that the group was infected in their first contact with the aliens, causes him to scream at the top of his lungs for help, and for an explanation from Dr. Damon.

Dr. Damon, who has been watching the whole scenario unfold, uses a microphone to advise the young man to calm down and trust the process and informs the bewildered Nic that his willpower must have made him the target of the aliens’ choice.

Exhausted by the hustle of it all, Nic proceeds to resign into a corner and comply with everything, until he sees Haley passed out on a hospital bed on the other side of the room and becomes motivated to try to find a way to escape.

Unexpectedly, Nic decides to use the power of his alien prosthetic and manages to break down the door, attacks a few staff members, and starts pulling Haley’s bed, looking to find a way to escape.

As Nic goes around the numerous hallways of the research center, Dr. Damon personally chases him around, manages to track him to an elevator, catches up to him, and begs him to stay for the sake of his safety while warning that he or anyone else can no longer protect him once he leaves.

Nic ignores this warning and continues                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            on is way out of the facility through a creepy, dark hallway. As soon as they make it outside, Haley regains consciousness but is still pretty groggy and so Nic helps her off her hospital bed and holds onto her, as they walk away from the seemingly insignificant looking building of the research facility, located in the middle of nowhere.

After a difficult few minutes, the duo makes it to the street and hitch a ride from a bizarre older lady named Mirabelle, who can’t seem to keep track of her own thought process. Haley falls asleep while Nic tries to ignore most of the random things Mirabelle narrates about, as she drives them to the nearest gas station, citing that they are not the first people to find themselves lost in this part of town.

At the gas station, hoping she could take it easy, Nic sits Haley outside as he goes inside a cafe to find a pay phone, hoping to alert someone of their situation and get help. Inside the cafe, Nic is worried to find that none of the phones seem to be working and as Nic looks around to ask someone for an alternative, he notices that the occupants seem to be in a daze, which adds to the number of questions in his mind about what’s going on.

Nic tries to ignore this and calm down but is utterly terrified to see both his and Haley’s profile on the news, labeled highly contagious, and with an order to alert the authorities at the sight of them.

Nic tries to come up with the necessary steps to disguise himself and leave the cafe slowly but all that falls through, as he looks out the window and sees Haley get escorted into a truck.

Panicked, Nic runs as fast as he can to catch up to the driver, who seems to want to get away from him. Luckily, Nic manages to do so and politely asks the driver to slow down so that he can talk to him. However, having the upper hand, the driver decides to have fun with Nic and speeds away as fast as he can.

Nic is worried about the driver’s intentions but soon remembers his powerful legs. To the absolute terror of the driver, Nic starts running like a madman and catches up to the fully speeding truck in no time. Haley then holds the driver at gunpoint with his own gun and the duo finally manages to get the truck to stop.

The confused driver is easily thrown out of the truck and as he asks who and what the duo are, Nic and Haley take his truck and drive away as fast as possible. During the drive, Nic’s concern for Haley increases as she seems to be in a continuous haze and keeps asking him about things they have already discussed.

Nic calms Haley down as she seems to be easily frazzled and advises her to relax, vowing to himself that he will never let anything happen to her.

On the other side of town, after doing some research into their missing subjects’ whereabouts, Dr. Damon tracks down Mirabelle and takes her to the facility for questioning.

Meanwhile, Nic and Haley continue driving and after a few miles, they are utterly disturbed to find that the road abruptly ends into nowhere and question what’s going on.

At the facility, the weird lady once again acts in a questionably bizarre manner and seems to be stuck in a single loop of thought as she continuously repeats the same thing over and over again, to the point that communication with her becomes impossible. Seeing no way forward, the doctor discreetly prepares his gun as the lady starts acting psychotic.

Elsewhere, having no other option, Nic and Haley continue driving around for a while and are confused to see that they seem to be surrounded by the same canyon wherever they go. Then, after going a few miles, the duo finds a visitor’s center and goes in, to catch their breaths and learn about their surroundings as much as possible.

Inside the center, the duo finds a map but fails to learn anything useful about the city and freaks out about how carefully the map is crafted to give as little and as insignificant details as possible. As the duo spends the afternoon there, Nick takes responsibility for everything and apologizes to Haley for disrupting her life and putting her in danger by looking for Nomad.

Haley’s symptoms seem to get worse as she starts acting more resigned and hearing noises nobody else can attest to. For safety reasons, the duo decides to spend the night there until they decide how to proceed the next morning.

That night, still in their hazmat suits, Dr. Damon and his people bombard the truck driver’s house and seal it from the outside, while he is inside, believing that the driver may be contagious after coming in contact with their subjects.

At the visiting center, Nic and Haley hear some peculiar noises around the house, carefully make their way around, and are excited to be reunited with Jonah, who has intelligently opted to wear a hazmat suit, successfully disguising himself as one of the facility’s staff, and the trio embrace in utter joy.

At the driver’s house, once the officers make sure everything’s airtight, the doctor enters the house to question the driver about the missing subjects and after he gets all the information that he needs, the doctor kills the driver.

At the visitor’s center, as Haley sleeps, Nic is dismayed to notice that she has the same number as him, tattooed on her back, where a piece of alien technology has been inserted.

Then, as  Nic and Jonah catch up about everything that happened since they last spoke through the vents in the facility, Jonah shares his observation that all the numbers tattooed on them,  add up to 51 and speculates that it might not be an identification number for them as they first thought but instead is an Id for the area and strongly argues that they are in Area 51; a known highly classified government research center.

Jonah then adds that he no longer feels the same and reveals that both his hands have been fitted with the alien prosthetic. Nic calms down his best friend and After discussing the matter further, the boys decide that their only option to win the fight against their mighty enemy is to expose its work to the public and set out to do so.

Jonah drives the truck with his two best friends by his side and as they get to a checkpoint, he dons his hazmat suit, trying to blend in with the rest of the military, while Nic and Haley hide behind.

Everything is calm at first but as soon as the officers proceed to take a closer look inside the truck and ask Jonah to get out of the truck, Jonah panics and attempts to speed away but is stopped by cement roadblocks. All hell breaks loose then, as Jonah jumps out of the ruck and heads to the control room, hoping to hack into the military database and learn as much as he can about their strange situation.

This doesn’t go as Jonah hoped, as he has a difficult time typing with the giant fingers of the prosthetic appendage. The military then gases the control room and forces the intruder out. Feeling cornered, Jonah leaves the control room and as he rushes back to his friends, he is gravely shot.

Nic rushes to Jonah’s side and attempts to help him to the truck, hoping to inspect his wounds and help him. However, knowing that he won’t survive his injuries, Jonah offers to help his friends escape as his final act of camaraderie and begs Nic to make sure people know their story.

Upon Jonah’s orders, Nic returns to his truck and waits until Jonah uses his giant prosthetic hands to punch through the cement roadblocks and clear the path, and speeds away mourning his best friend, while Jonah summons his last ounce of energy to wreak havoc on the soldiers, successfully distracting them and saving his friends’ lives by sacrificing his own.

Unfortunately, Nic and Haley drive only a few miles before they come upon a roadblock led by Dr. Damon. Finding the idea of going back to the facility unfathomable, Nic attempts to drive through the roadblock but is stopped by spikes that ruin the tires and crash the truck.

Both Nic and Haley are thrown out of the truck and lay side by side on the ground, as they share how much they love one another. Moments later, a crew of men takes Haley and transports her away in a helicopter, as Dr. Damon warns Nic not to even think about searching for her.

A few minutes later, Dr. Damon slowly approaches Nic, while complimenting him that he is their finest achievement as he is the perfect mix between alien technology and human will. All of a sudden, the glass breaks for Nic as he reads the doctor’s name tag, all written in capital, and realizes that Damon is Nomad, written backward.

Before Nic can process that the man he has been seeking all along has been close by all along, the doctor admits to being Nomad and taunts Nic by reminding him that he was the one that came looking for him and hence deserved whatever he got.

Nic thinks about all the loss and carnage his silly curiosity has brought about and becomes overwhelmed with grief and anger. Hoping to release the pent-up tension inside of him, Nic starts running across the road at superspeed and ends up breaking through an invisible barrier.

Nic walks through the broken barrier with curiosity and meets Nomad, who takes off his hazmat suit and reveals himself to be a robotic alien with a human-like face.

As Nic tries to process this fact, he looks out the window and sees numerous stars shining bright in the dark sky and it dawns on him that he is on an alien aircraft, and not on earth like he thought. Upon further deduction, Nic realizes that the number on his forearm corresponds to the number of the alien aircraft. Although exhausted, Nick tries to remember all that he and his friends figured out in the last few days and attempts to work out where in the universe his new home fits in.

Nic and his friends were probably not meant to survive the first few days after the incident or never make it out of the facility and the only thing that got them as far as they did, was the love they had for one another and the value they had for their friendship.

This goes a long way to show that Love and Will go a long way to help people even in the most bizarre of situations.

The Signal 2014.