![]() ![]() She seems at first like Jamie Lee Curtis in The Fog (1980) or Road Games (1981) - an unconnected passerby who hitches onto the man’s wagon - but is that the case? It’s unclear. That reality jives with James’ obsession, but it leaves a disjointed feel to parts of Broadcast Signal Intrusion including the presence of a young unhoused woman named Alice ( Kelley Mack). ![]() He crosses paths with other characters, and their value to him comes down to how they can help his quest. As new details come to light, some answering questions and others posing more, James is unable to stop digging, as the only thing worse than losing someone you love is not knowing what you lost them to. finds the heart of the man’s increasing desperation. The mystery is compelling, though, and while James could have used a character buff Shum Jr. Layering in a mystery to both their origin and purpose teases a thematic connection of sorts to Joel Schumacher’s 8MM (1999), but where that film builds to a concrete (albeit still disappointing) ending Broadcast Signal Intrusion feels content leaving a bit too much unanswered. These kinds of intrusions actually happened as signal hacking and broadcast realities were more open to outside interference, and Gentry presents them as snippets that are as innocuous as they are disturbing. The script, from Phil Drinkwater and Tim Woodall, captures the details of the period well as the early days of the internet offered little guidance in histories both distantly past and tangibly recent. If only the final execution was as definitive. As with George Sluizer’s The Vanishing (1993), grief and reason are overpowered by a need to know what happened to a loved one, and it’s a powerful force pushing James and viewers down a bleak and disturbing road. ![]() Jacob Gentry‘s Broadcast Signal Intrusion excels at setting up its isolated protagonist with a black hole mystery even if the destination remains elusive. Who’s responsible, and could they be connected to women who went missing around the time of each broadcast? The takeover image features a masked figure “speaking” incoherently - it’s creepy, indecipherable, and gone as mysteriously as it arrived. James finds a new purpose, with an old motivation, when he stumbles onto a handful of signal intrusions interrupting television shows. He restores and repairs old home video equipment and logs television shows broadcast in the days of cable’s infancy, but it’s all mere distraction from the grief and uncertainty he feels over his wife’s disappearance years prior. It’s the late 90s, the cusp of a new millennium, and James ( Harry Shum Jr.) is a young man working alone in basements and dark lofts. Broadcast Signal Intrusion gets many of these elements down with an unsettling style, but its ending leaves far too much to be desired. The best center around the mystery, an increasingly obsessed protagonist heading down a rabbit hole, and a denouement that satisfies viewers even if it leaves the character themselves in the dark. This review of Broadcast Signal Intrusion is part of our coverage of the 2021 Fantasia Film Festival.Ĭonspiracy theories have always offered dense and mysterious fodder for films as they often take the concept of a hero’s quest down some increasingly dark alleyways. ![]()
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