Fridge Horror
- The signal affects any parent, including the elderly, which causes them to actively seek out their children and kill them on sight. So, even if you are an adult with no children, if your parents are still alive, you are pretty much screwed.
- Say the signal wears off and the parents are back to normal. Imagine the horrific realization they'll face the moment they discover that they killed their own offspring.
- While Kendall is driving home, she hears an announcement on the radio, warning parents not to go near their children, no matter how much they want to. How many parents went to their kids, not knowing they were affected by the signal? Or even worse, thinking they had enough Heroic Willpower to overcome it?
- In a flashback, Brent freaks out at his wife over something as minor as an argument between them to the point that he angrily destroys parts of his man-cave. This along with other signs of stress Brent has throughout the movie before the signal affects him implies Brent was already gonna snap even without the signal.
- There is no explanation to the signal but it has a very malevolent and murderous purpose as it makes every adult who has children have an uncontrollable urge to kill their offspring. If it is a type of interdimensional entity or a malevolent brain-altering signal, then how was it created? Who made it? How did it get to every station? Nobody knows for sure but if it's from something that's far more worse than the current events happening, then we dread what this greater evil even is.
- Imagine if someone pregnant was infected. What lengths would they go to kill the child inside of them?
Fridge Logic
- How exactly would the signal affect Damon's dad if it reverses parents' protective instincts towards their children? The film indicates that he was abusive to Damon.
- He can still have a protective instinct even if he is abusive, people's feelings and behavior aren't that binary.
- At least the orphans will be OK.
- And adopted kids. Imagine that conversation...
- Not necessarily, if it is the parental instinct being subverted here; as that is also very relevant to adopted kids whose parents see them as their own.
- But the signal DOES have a biological component since it's messing with biological functions of the brain. So in other words, adopted kids whose parents are dead or orphans are safe from parents who share DNA since their biological parents are deceased.
- That being said, parents who adopt but still have biological kids in addition to adopted kids will go after their biological children.
- However, good adopted parents who only have adopted kids are gonna have to fight against adopted parents who also have biological kids (who would be affected by the signal's biological factors) and also fight against already abusive adopted parents who only have adopted kids (who would exploit the situation to unleash even worse cruelty to their kids), and of course the third obstacle for them to oppose would be parents who are abusive either way.
- With nothing stating otherwise, certain adoptive parents who are great people and fully actualized their adopted kids as their own might indeed react to them murderously in a cruel subversion.
- And adopted kids. Imagine that conversation...
