We Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Programming: BROADCAST SIGNAL INTRUSION Blu-Ray Review
Image courtesy of Dark Sky Films.
Before the days of internet hacking groups like TeaMp0isoN, Lizard Squad, and perhaps most famously, Anonymous, there was the infamous Max Headroom broadcast signal intrusion. The signal hijacking occurred in single night in 1987, when the television broadcasts of two Chicago television stations were interrupted by a video of an unidentified person wearing a Max Headroom mask and costume, backed by distorted audio and a metal panel in the background to imitate the geometric background effect of Max Headroom’s TV spots.
The two hijackings lasted a total of less than two minutes combined, but during the incidents, the masked person made references to Max Headroom's endorsement of Coca-Cola, the TV series Clutch Cargo, WGN anchor Chuck Swirsky; and "all the greatest world newspaper nerds", a reference to WGN's call letters, which stands for "World's Greatest Newspaper." The video ended with the person's exposed ass being spanked by a woman with a flyswatter before normal programming resumed. Despite an extensive FCC investigation and years of dissection by conspiracy and internet groups, the culprits were never caught.
HARRY SHUM, JR. in BROADCAST SIGNAL INTRUSION. Image courtesy of Dark Sky Films.
JACOB GENTRY’S 2021 horror-thriller, BROADCAST SIGNAL INTRUSION, now available on Blu-ray, takes these true-life incidents as a springboard to explore the ideas of internet conspiracies and personal obsession.
Set during 1999, James (played by HARRY SHUM, JR.) is archiving video tapes for a Chicago television station when he discovers that one contains a broadcast signal intrusion where a person is disguised in a black wig and distorted female face mask. The video is difficult to hear clearly, but he is immediately fascinated. He chooses to investigate reports of a similar intrusion that occurred during an episode of a sci-fi TV show, only to discover that the FCC took all of the station's copies. As he continues to search, James uncovers a possible conspiracy that links these intrusions to the disappearance of several women, including his own wife, Hannah.
As James becomes increasingly obsessed with tracking down the source and meaning of the broadcast signal intrusions, he enlists the aid of the mysterious Alice (KELLEY MACK), who may or may not have her own ulterior motives for helping the still-grieving man. As they watch and decipher the tapes, finding breadcrumbs hidden amongst the images and static buzzes to go off on, including a voice saying, “I fixed them. I fixed them all,” they get pulled more and more into potential danger, as well as James’ own unhealthy obsession with these intrusions. At one point, Alice asks James if he had any hobbies, and James admits that he can’t seem to remember anything from before his hunt into the intrusions started.
KELLEY MACK in BROADCAST SIGNAL INTRUSION. Image courtesy of Dark Sky Films.
The film goes all in on the 90’s era thriller vibe, with its washed-out colors and sinister shadows, particularly with regards to the soundtrack by BEN LOVETT, which lends itself to a hard-boiled, noir, detective film. The videos themselves feel akin to the Poughkeepsie Tapes in their surreal strangeness: brief, nightmarish images of a masked person as well as an animatronic figure based on a fake 80’s sitcom with staccato movements, emitting electronic wails, buzzes, and hums that can’t help but creep along your spine. If animatronics that look like they stepped out of the film Tourist Trap ain’t your bag, you may want to skip this one. There’s some pretty horrific robot malfunction stuff in this.
HARRY SHUM, JR. is solid as a man still haunted by the disappearance of his wife, and despite his attempts to come to grips with it through his group therapy sessions, when he discovers that one of the intrusions came just after she disappeared, his character immediately clings to the information like a lifeline. “Never attribute conspiracy to that which is more appropriately labeled coincidence,” warns his colleague. But James is a man that wants rationalization, wants answers, wants punishment, no matter if it’s legitimate or not, and it is near the end of the film, when James’ obsession reaches its zenith, that Shum really shines.
CHRIS SULLIVAN in BROADCAST SIGNAL INTRUSION. Image courtesy of Dark Sky Films.
BROADCAST SIGNAL INTRUSION gets some things right, keeping the viewer on our toes with its dark potential in the first half of the film, which is, arguably, where the film is at its strongest, as we follow James through his growing, insatiable need for answers. It paints its plot with spatterings of films like Sinister, Videodrome, and 8mm, but somehow isn’t able to reach the same heights as those films do. It particularly feels akin to 8mm, the underrated and vastly way more disturbing 1999 NICHOLAS CAGE film, where Cage played a private investigator hired to discover if a "snuff film" is authentic or not. Both films are a descent into obsession, complete with a sidekick who helps them investigate, but where 8mm swings for the fences in terms of subject matter and performances, and just downright bleak af humanity at its worst, BROADCAST SIGNAL INTRUSION plays their cards a little too close to the vest, becoming muddled in the process.
The ending of BSI, though disturbing, ultimately ends up being unfulfilling and vague. The film makes a point to connect these intrusions to the disappearance of several women, but no detail as to the circumstances of how they disappeared or how they may be connected to each other is ever explored, and one main character even disappears near the end of the film with no explanation as to whatever happened to them. The film intentionally leads us down potential rabbit holes, and we follow them down, hoping they’ll lead back up somewhere new and revelatory, but they just end up leaving us fumbling around in the dark.
Image courtesy of Dark Sky Films.
What BROADCAST SIGNAL INTRUSION effectively presents is how the need for closure can sometimes in and of itself be a corruptible and corrosive thing. We watch, powerless, as James continues to put himself in more and more danger at the expense of needing answers as to the circumstances of his wife’s disappearance, even if it means that closure comes at the cost of someone’s life. In the end, we are left without any sense of conclusion or clarity, the only resolution being the state of James’ psyche, a delusional and grief-stricken thing, that has now become as ugly and unnerving as the intrusions that he sought to expose.
BLU RAY DETAILS:
MPAA rating : NR (Not Rated)
Package Dimensions : 6.73 x 5.35 x 0.39 inches; 2.5 Ounces
Director : Jacob Gentry
Media Format : NTSC, Subtitled
Run time : 1 hour and 44 minutes
Release date : December 7, 2021
Studio : Dark Sky Films
Country of Origin : USA
Number of discs : 1
