The spirit of a murdered girl returns with a message for the staff of a local radio station.

Laurie Wolf (Siwan Morris), a successful radio personality and DJ, begins her final day of work at a radio station by rolling out of bed, lighting a cigarette, and listening to message after message of producers unwilling to hire her. Kindly young mother Kate (Joanna Ignaczewska) looks after her disabled son while bill collectors take their belongings. Both women face the foreseeable end of their securities and end up taking chances that neither are comfortable with in Dark Signal. Produced Neil Marshall (The Descent) and directed and co-written by Edward Evers-Swindell, Dark Signal is an engrossing horror mystery that is quite a lot of fun to watch if not a total success.

Laurie Wolf begins her last late-night radio broadcast barely on time, much to the chagrin of her loyal engineer and friend Ben (Gareth David-Lloyd). As the two settle in, Ben explains to Laurie that he has invited a famed psychic Carla Zaza (Cinzia Monreale) on to talk about the paranormal and “The Other Side” sending the skeptical Laurie further into pissy mode. 

Meanwhile, Kate goes off on a date with Nick (Duncan Pow), leaving her son with a sitter. This isn’t just any date. No, this is a mission to retrieve money that was taken from Kate which would go a long way in helping her pay rent. Did we mention that while these two seemingly discordant stories are unfolding there is also a serial killer on the lose? Yes. This is a killer who, after murdering his/her victims, removes their ring finger.

If you think there is a lot going on you are right. We have the story of impoverished Kate stealing money with a date, we have the serial killer roaming the countryside, and we have the skeptical radio host who’s engineer has invited a psychic on a night when the station begins to intercept what could be signals from beyond.

Surprisingly, director Evers-Swindell does a remarkable job juggling the three storylines up to a point, packing almost too much into the parallel stories that play out without becoming convoluted. That is, until the end. Remaining spoiler free, I will say that while the pace was impressive, as was the juggling act that was the story, Dark Signal suffers from over staying its welcome. We have our three act structure going on here but when the final act hits, man does it go on. 

The positives are plenty though. All performances are strong. In particular Morris’ snarky Wolf and Monreale‘s Carla have a great sort of painful chemistry happening. The production values are lush with beautiful work from Adrian Brown lensing the film and a nice production design from Tabitha Quitman. The mystery is a lot of fun too as it certainly kept me guessing up until the last third of the film when I wished it had made a hasty exit once all was revealed.