Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures
The movie was The Signal (the fascinating and gruesome trailer is below), a horror flick where most of the credited cast has names like "Random Body" and, err, "Random Body." As mentioned in Friday's LAist Weekend Movie Guide, it was a hit at Sundance 2007.
Well, imagine watching this scary movie in a near empty theater. That's what was happening Sunday night around 7:30 p.m. at the Fullerton AMC Theater in Orange County. Then imagine, possibly during a stabbing scene (it's a pretty intense horror movie, so the odds are there), that you are getting stabbed yourself. Yeah, that happened to two men in separate parts of the theater when another patron yielded a knife. One victim, was stabbed in the arm, but another had his lungs punctured, but officials say he is expected to survive.
Earlier in the day, a man with a similar description (male, 20s, black spikey hair, 5'10") was kicked out of the theater for being drunk. Employees and police think he may be connected while the two victims say they do not know their attacker.
KNBC reported last night during the 11 o'clock news that the movie was paused during a stabbing scene when officials arrived and inferred that only three people were in the theater at the time of the incident (the two victims and the suspect). However, Lt. Basham, a watch commander with the Fullerton Police Department cannot confirm some of these facts and said there was some fiction being reported in the media along with this story. However, he can confirm that police are still searching for the suspect who fled through the backdoors of the theater.
From the LAist Weekend Movie Guide, February 22
The Signal is one of those movies that simply shouldn't work. It's made by young filmmakers (three co-directors working independently actually) and it's both low-budget and high-concept. Nevertheless, it provides some real scares and should be a welcome tonic to any horror fan tired of American knock-offs of better Asian films. It was a hit at Sundance 2007 and finally hits screens today. See it.
Photo by CarbonNYC via Flickr
