Signal One review – Dennis Quaid and David Thewlis star in high-concept, low-risk first contact yarn

Sci-fi about the inventor of a device to communicate with aliens, in which scientists spend too much time talking astrophysics at each other

S teven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day is not alone in the universe. It is now joined by another sci-fi about Earth’s first contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life in the form of a high-concept, low-risk, talky drama from writer-director Jonathan Sobol. It stars Isabelle Fuhrman as Dr Annika Cask, a brilliant young computer scientist, already famous for taking the first photograph of dark matter.

Predictably for this kind of film, Annika has a tragic backstory (the death in childhood of her sister) which drives her single mindedness and has left her with a deep sense of the fragility of life. She takes a job for brash tech billionaire Dennis Quaid, working on a top-secret project on his private island in the Caribbean. On the helicopter she’s joined by another wonder-kid, electronics engineer Charlie (Josh Hutcherson). The pair have been recruited to keep an eye on the even more brilliant Perry Glassner (David Thewlis), who has invented a device called Littlemouth, a fancy-looking mini-pylon designed to communicate with other life in the universe. Glassner is an unbalanced narcissist, played by Thewlis in style of his character Johnny in Mike Leigh’s Naked: all fear and rage, though channelled this time through a PhD in quantum physics. Here he is on a rant about humanity: “Petty, cruel, prone to self-destruction, hellbent on rage-fucking our habitat out of existence.”

Thewlis’s nihilism gives the dialogue some edge. Elsewhere the script features too many conversations between space scientists talking astrophysics at each other while looking at data buzzing about on screens; this shows off writer-director Sobol’s impressive research but creates a black hole of entertainment. The film has a clever dodge for avoiding the inevitable silly moment when the aliens are revealed but, in a few too many scenes, this is a bit more snore than awe.