All three parts ‘Signal’ mayhem and horror

A daisy-chain dystopia filmed by three directors, “The Signal” combines the inconstancy of an omnibus film with the blandness of art by committee. The result feels less like a blend of distinct styles than an opportunistic hodgepodge.

In the city of Terminus, madness has broken out, spawned by a mysterious TV broadcast that resembles an overactive lava lamp. Too busy canoodling to turn on the flat screen, Mya (Anessa Ramsey) and Ben (Justin Welborn) escape the initial infection, but Mya’s jealous, brutish husband, Lewis (A.J. Bowen), is among the first to succumb to what one character calls “the crazy.” Separated by fate, the lovers make their way toward a bloody, battered reunion as the world goes mad around them.

“The Signal’s” first and last segments, directed by David Bruckner and Dan Bush, are united in their glum, seedy tone. For the middle, Jacob Gentry takes a different approach, veering away from straight horror and into blood-spattered comedy.

The shift is jarring, but something of a relief. There’s one revolting death, and a previously unimagined use for a severed head. But for a while, at least, the apocalypse isn’t such a bad place to be.

-- Sam Adams

“The Signal.” MPAA rating: R for strong, brutal, bloody violence throughout, pervasive language and brief nudity. Running time: One hour, 34 minutes. In limited release.

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Whodunit needs to find ‘Cover’

If “Cover” has practical advice for wives living too-good-to-be-true lives, it’s that when your husband says, “Maybe I’m not the man you think I am,” consider it a big warning.

A ham-fisted mash-up of African American melodrama message flick, “Cover” opens with a crime of passion, then becomes a flashback whodunit told from an interrogation room where murder suspect Valerie (Aunjanue Ellis) tells a D.A. (Clifton Davis) and a grizzled cop (Louis Gossett Jr.) how her perfect life fell apart. Something was hinky with psychiatrist hubby Dutch (Raz Adoti) when they moved from Atlanta to Philadelphia and an old flame of his (Paula Jai Parker) suddenly went from flirtatious to suicidal, and his two college buddies (Leon and Roger Guenveur Smith) started behaving like sinful tempters from a religious tract.

“Cover” wants to be Hitchcock by way of Tyler Perry, but the loopy tone shifts, pedestrian visual style and camp-friendly acting suggest an unfortunate kinship with R. Kelly’s soapy video opus “Trapped in the Closet.”

-- Robert Abele

“Cover.” MPAA rating: PG-13 for mature thematic material, sexual situations and language, violence and some drug content. Running time: One hour, 36 minutes. Exclusively at AMC Magic Johnson Crenshaw, 4020 Marlton Ave., Los Angeles, (323) 290-5900.

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Misdeeds in ‘How to Rob a Bank’

Like a screenwriting Robin Hood, Andrews Jenkins steals from rich sources and gives to the idea-poor, namely himself, with “How to Rob a Bank.”

Nick Stahl plays a surcharge-incensed customer who marches into a bank to withdraw his money sans fees and walks into a gang of robbers led by an oily Gavin Rossdale. Trapped in the vault with sultry nerd Erika Christensen (in her best impression of Julia Stiles in the “Bourne” films), Stahl fields cellphone calls from Rossdale, the police negotiator (Terry Crews) and the mastermind, played by an off-camera David Carradine.

The actors plunge into Jenkins’ lame dialogue as if it were written by the ghost of Ben Hecht, but there’s no reading brisk enough to save a line like “Your little gadget is about to be a bunch of little gadget pieces.” Jenkins hauls out every trendy device he can -- shifting film stocks and in-joke intertitles -- but fails to fill the film’s brief running time. Stahl’s character may gripe about being nickel and dimed, but “How to Rob a Bank” commits wholesale robbery of the 81 minutes it takes to watch.

-- Sam Adams

“How to Rob a Bank.” MPAA rating: Unrated. Running time: One hour, 21 minutes. Exclusively at Laemmle Sunset 5, 8000 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, (323) 848-3500.