Broadcast Signal Intrusion (2021) User Reviews

Lacking a hook

[jtindahouse · 6/10 · 23 November 2021]

'Broadcast Signal Intrusion' is a strange movie. It's based around a character who is obsessed with a conspiracy he has stumbled upon, however we don't really understand his motives or obsession, and so it can be quite hard to stay invested in it with him. Where it all ends up actually turns out to be reasonably interesting, but we don't know that's going to be the case, and so the journey can be an arduous one.

The movie does a good job of feeling like it is set in the 90s. It doesn't just feel like a movie set then, it feels like one that was made then. It also does a good job of utilising its clearly minimal budget.

The film's biggest problem is that it is lacking a hook. It isn't particularly scary, and it isn't always captivating in its narrative, so the audience may find itself drifting along purposeless at times. It's not a terrible film, but is reasonably forgettable. 6/10.

Trailer had me intrigued, but the film itself does not offer a whole lot more than that

[rhett-p · 4/10 · 31 October 2021]

Not enough meat on the bone for this script, seemed like a decent setup but it never really got out of the first act and failed to establish any kind of "stakes" to help ramp up the tension. Overall production values were decent and the acting fine for the most part. I suggest giving this one a miss however as even the "creepy pasta" subject-matter is unfulfilling.

The good outweighs the bad...

[kmashburn-00043 · 6/10 · 4 May 2022]

Don't worry about spoilers. I'm not entirely sure I know what happened.

I love obscure, ambiguous endings open to broad interpretation...up to a point. The ending here was a bit too "not sure how to wrap this one up, so...here you go." Roll credits. Or maybe it was the result of slash and burn editing. I don't know.

The lead (James) was believable and intense, and the mystery, atmosphere, and creepy imagery definitely held my attention. The music was...ugh. Distracting and, well...intrusive at times. Almost like the composer was scoring a completely different film.

I have my own theory about the ending, but this one requires a re-watch. Few horror movies warrant revisiting, but even with its flaws, this isn't one I'll forget 20min after the end credits. I'm not lazy about probing alternate interpretations, but I need something a bit more solid to work with. That being said, I will watch this one again and scour for clues. I rarely write reviews, but this one was effective as an "experience," if not as a full-fledged narrative.

If you're OK with the slow burn and can tolerate a "WTF" ending, give this one a shot. I can overlook some of the technical drawbacks if a movie is unique, memorable, and brave enough to abandon the horror formula. The cliches are here, too, of course, but this movie is miles above 90% of current horror fare.

Feels rather incomplete and jumbled.

[awfulketchup · 4/10 · 8 December 2021]

Not sure what to say, it felt like I've wasted time on a incomplete mess of a movie that tackles conspiracy theories the same way a creepypasta parodies the dangers of the dark web. I'm pretty sure that this film was inspired by the ''I feel fantastic'' robot woman video that surfaced on youtube many years ago, on paper that sounds like a great idea but in reality what we have here is a movie that has nothing to be thrilled about.

I know I'm sounding harsh and someone out there probably enjoyed this and the people behind it had great ideas, but at the end of the day, I was bored, couldn't get invested in the actors and a plot that had potential but kept stumbling, slowing the movie to a snails phase.

Interesting, strange, and incomplete

[jjturley · 7/10 · 22 May 2022]

Spoiler alert!

This movie was well done and the acting was quite solid. The year is 1999 and the place is Chicago. A man, James, grieving for the disappearance of his girlfriend, Hannah, a few years ago buries himself in his work as a film editor. He also regularly attends group therapy sessions with other folks processing their grief.

While reviewing a video from the late 1980's, James stumbles on a strange 'intrusion' of several seconds. Someone wearing a mask in a darkened room is wailing at the camera. There is a lot of background noise. Very strange and intriguing.

James decides to follow up and find out the source of this illegal broadcast. Along the way, he meets a Dr. Lithgow who reports there were two (or possibly three) such broadcasts. The FCC, in their search to find the perpetrators, has come down hard and confiscated as many copies of this video as they could find.

Some odd characters come out of the woodwork to warn James about these videos. He also learns that he is being followed by a strange woman named Alice. He ducks into a bar and she follows him inside. Alice will only reveal what's up if James agrees to get drunk with her.

From this point, we venture into more strangeness in James' obsessive pursuit of the source of the broadcasts. From the dates, James figures out there is a connection to disappearance of Hannah. There is a storage shed containing nothing but a rotary phone and an old answering machine. This leads them to a P. O. Box.

They then find the perpetrator... or do they? James doesn't think so. Alice however does and then vanishes that same evening. Incredibly, James the next morning barely notices or cares.

I am convinced that what we are really watching is James' descent into madness. It is all of his grief which is manufacturing some solution to how Hannah vanished. I wonder if Alice and Dr. Lithgow even exist! Poor James is losing his mind. The movie seems to end abruptly without resolution.

Who? When? Where? What? Why? How?

[jamericanbeauty · 1/10 · 16 July 2022]

I just finished this and it failed at basic storytelling. Movies about broadcast signal intrusions can be an addictive psychological thriller or intriguing horror if well-written. This movie throws interesting things and people at you and answers nothing in the end. I liked Harry Shum Jr. And the rest of the cast until Sansa Stark's doppelganger removed her hoodie and revealed how irritating she is. What was the point of her? To be a know-it-all chatty sidekick? Harry Shum Jr. Was fine investigating solo. She then disappears without explanation. What happened to the Antique Dealer? What was the loud thumping above the Phreaker's basement? The last 36 minutes really dragged on and resolved nothing. The more I type this, the more insulted I feel by the writers and director. You don't draw an audience in, throw a bunch of mystery and build up at them and answer nothing. I will never support or watch anything with their names on it.

WOW! Seriously, wow... Extremely mysterious and intriguing, but ultimately very abstract and may annoy those who like a tidy ending (or any explanation at all... 😁)

[lathe-of-heaven · 7/10 · 20 February 2022]

Whew... I just this minute finished watching this. This is one of those odd films that takes many twists and turns, but doesn't clearly explain everything. First and foremost, this is a Mystery. Period. If you like a movie that really, REALLY draws you in and truly keeps you wondering what the HELL is going to happen next, this is for you.

This is one of those films where although in its execution it does come across as a fairly 'normal' movie, but as it gradually takes you down the rabbit hole, along with the main protagonist, you really begin to wonder what is behind all of this. And remember, this is all started by just a chance circumstance where this fellow whose job it is to transfer video cassettes randomly happens across this odd pirate signal in one of the many mundane broadcasts that he is copying from many years previously.

So, for such an odd, completely random event to draw him and us the audience into this mysterious labyrinth trying to find out what is going on, is in and of itself a bit of a mind-blower. Let me tell you, what happens next and the events that follow will challenge your mind's elasticity. Heh... I know I'm kind of building this up somewhat, because just the overall impact of it is so strange and unsettling. But, the actual progression of events take place, at least at first, just like a 'normal' mystery... That is, until you get to the end, but of course we are not going to talk about that 😊

The acting is okay, it gets the job done and is sufficient. Without giving anything away, I will say that I felt the fellow connected to the storage unit was absolutely THE best actor here by far. It was a small scene, but he frigg'n NAILED it! The technical merits are fine and everything as far as the actual filmmaking is done competently. It's just the frigg'n STORY that ultimately grabs you by the nether regions and smacks you around until you wonder what the HELL just happened!

I personally really liked the ultimate abstract nature of the story, even though it leaves you hanging 7 different way from Sunday (is that even an expression...?) and leaves many, MANY loose ends. BUT... for many people, I can see where like some of the other reviewers have stated in their titles here, it may just seem like 'nothing is happening' or that things don't seem to make sense. And, I can see where many probably will not care for that. But, I would say that, again, first and foremost, if you like a really intriguing mystery, and you don't mind a bit of a trip through the Looking Glass that ultimately and quite literally leaves you out on an unknown road somewhere, you might actually find this movie as unsettling and intriguing as I did.

An obscure waste of time

[Movieshepherd · 3/10 · 7 November 2021]

I kept watching because I needed some sense of "why you would do this?" No. Nothing. Nada. Zip. So here's the thing, a lot of people have the belief that if the viewer didn't understand it, they must be idiots. No. When you make something so obscure, there is no plausible plot or reason, it becomes nothing. It's not artsy or edgy, it's "I ran out of ideas and made it weird". Not everyone enjoys the same formula and a level of avante-gard is appreciated but this was so vague and weird, it missed the mark. It was disjointed and seems like a lot of extra work for someone who just killed somebody and then supposedly wanted to confess, it just didn't make any sense. This was for a pretentious palette and apparently most of us are just hicks. The actors did a fine job and the filming was nice, but that was it.

A lot of signals

[kosmasp · 7/10 · 18 October 2021]

I have to admit, I wasn't the biggest fan of Signal - a movie that made quite the waves many years ago. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I didn't like it, I was just not as fond of it as many others were back then. Having said that, I imagine fans of that movie will like this too.

One thing you have to keep in mind here: the movie gives you more questions than answers. Also it provides ... well some answers in pieces - you have to put them together. So the main character is doing this - that should mean that this happened in between, right? And what about that character? Saying certain things, but is he telling the truth? Also what are those noises from upstairs? Again - this warrants multiple viewings and even then I doubt you'll be able or fully satisfied.

A man slowly goes down a very shallow rabbit-hole. Not a horror.

[Victor_Fallon · 4/10 · 18 December 2021]

Shum Jr is decent in the lead, but he's wrestling with a sloppy script and zero character development. The supporting cast is poor, all hammy hams. Every line is exposition - which I think is meant to be in the style of a 'hard-boiled detective thriller', but comes off as hokey.

It's meant to be set in the late 90s, but the soundtrack seems to think this is a noir movie, full of saxophones and quirky embellishments. But there isn't a single visual noir element, so it never works. Then we'll get some 70s-style psychadelic music for no reason. What a mess. The cinematography flits between hand-held and locked at random, so there is no flow. It all boils down to poor direction.

The story amounts to nothing - it's a simple procedural tale of a man investigating an unsolved mini-mystery with a bog-standard conclusion. For some reason, the movie is labeled as a 'horror', which is laughable. The VHS-style video 'intrusions' he is investigating are too hilarious to be creepy. And too innocuous. The 'crime' he is investigating for most of the runtime is the interruption of TV broadcasts. Why? Because the script says so, that's why.

It's also too slow to be a thriller. It's like an extended X-Files episode, but not one of the good episodes.

Dark web material

[blackmamba99971 · 8/10 · 23 October 2021]

For many, the hype for such stories like this often try to disassemble the human psyche. Since the internet was in full swing during the nineties, many closet directors wanted to make little clips such as the video in the movie so that the public can shake their heads and ask -- why?

Why go to so much trouble in creating a video which contains oddities such as the masked robot? To create strange noises so the viewer gets confused? Well for some it's a good way to hide a body as the film suggested.

This and other clues within the video tape so the protagonist remains fully aware that his investigation is going nowhere. During the early years of the 21st century, the dark web had crept in on the net. Inside of the web, many strange videos that could leave one wondering -- was that real? Or are they just jerking off?

It's pretty much both. If one could navigate the dark web properly, you would find horrifying clips beyond description but it's also dangerous to do so since the FBI had gotten involved and started shutting down questionable sites. Some of which were cleaned so well, that you could eat a steak off the sender's floor.

Broadcast intrusion is a lot like the dark web for its disturbing material content. A robot, mysterious deaths of three women, the sudden disappearance of Jame's sidekick who helped him, yet bolted once he was getting too close. It's as if she was protecting whoever made the videos painting her as an accomplice.

Then there's the so called real killer. Did he kill the women? Possibly. Maybe. Or - maybe not. Since James killed him after the confession only to run down a person on the road, which turned out to be another robot left unanswered questions. Like the suicide victim in the alley way, James will remain on the trail to the real answer, but not any time soon.

This is what the dark web is. It's full of loopholes, obstacles, puzzles, clues that lead nowhere. James may be smarter than some, but everyone knows that sociopaths and psychotics often have IQ'S that are up just a little higher than most. The killer, had that look on his face when James said, "we're going to do a video." Which made the so called killer smirk a bit. Telling the audience -- Hah, hook line and sinker. Just like the rest.

Broadcast has a lot of loopholes and open pages, but each page is to be written by James himself. If there is a deep conspiracy group out there, then there is definitely other hidden factions who work together to make the puzzle as difficult as possible to figure out. Hence, the odd videos, or broadcasts on the open web or dark web. It's all just a smoke screen to hide their real agendas.

Radical groups that stay in the closet until they're ready to expose themselves in the guise of strange characters like robots or faceless creatures are those who have absolutely nothing else better to do. Probably because they couldn't make it big on the silver screen or become a famed poet or author or some other form of entertainment. Or even an investigative reporter or archivist such as James who had real motives. Mysteries will remain the same no matter how far the FBI will go to stop them.

I like this film. It made me question the motives of the piracy signal that led James on a wild goose chase to nowhere. A few twists and turns here and there gave the movie some depth but without all of the needless existential proclivities that other films contained. Music was a nice touch for the near ending shot. Actors were on the ball with their own persona blended into their roles. Not a lot of action, but then again, talking about the net and video piracy laws are not that exciting to begin with.

I give it eight out of ten stars. Wonderfully shot, good locations, and a well thought out script.

interesting premise for a film

[Dottsylove · 6/10 · 24 October 2021]

These broadcast signal intrusions are really real. Go look it up on google. The one I know about is the Max Headroom pirate video back in the 80's CREEPY --and that's what this movie feeds on. Following a man as he searches for 3 of these specific intrusion to see if it leads to a pattern that has mystified police in the past. Creepy fun but didn't get the ending. 6.3 out of 10.

A theater release ARG

[Momomo-16 · 4/10 · 18 February 2022]

This movie is reminiscent of an internet Augmented (or Alternate) Reality Game. The acting is workable and the atmosphere is creepy, but it leaves far too much to be interpreted by the viewer. I enjoy a film that doesn't feel a need to explain everything, but this one is filled with what seem to be intentional loose and/or dead ends. It seems lazy, not edgy.

There are plenty of well written movies that are poorly executed,I and this is the opposite, it is a poorly written movie that was well executed.

TL;DR: Good atmosphere, good idea, bad writing.

Unexplained Ending

[imdb-16840 · 2/10 · 2 April 2022]

I've just sat through 100 minutes to be given no explanation for the film's bizarre and confusing events, or indeed any sort of payoff at all.

BSI has hints of good things -a dark atmosphere and an interesting premise. But characters are introduced then disappear, and the story plods along without developing very much. We never actually get to find out the truth of why the things happened, or who was responsible.

As for the ending... well, without giving spoilers I will just say that it seems the writer ran out of ideas about to wrap things up, so they just didn't bother.

when the nerd...

[ops-52535 · 7/10 · 9 December 2021]

Becomes a nerdiest nerd of nerds, a slowdriven mysterythriller made in a forgotten genre, that only a few, especially swedish filmakers have been good at over the past deceniums since its golden age back in the 60's and 1970's. A man that goes wholeheartedly into shadowland clandestine stuff, with the risk of loosing his own life.

Its a plot that demands the viewer to be imaginative and some kinda superstitious and sub-urban in its mindset, you as the spy are given clues, but is it just bait?? The makers of this movie has done the task of stashing loads of old electronic and mechanical devices very well, giving a real feel on the timestamp. Story goes very deep into the matter, so it doesnt matter if you dont understand everything, because it is there forever and free to watch over and over again, as long as a copy excists.

The use of light and shadow and a good hand on the focus puller combined with a nervewrecking kind of brass blowers independent blow at the horn, along with pretty intense and meticoulus acting by the small cast make this low budgie pay you back in threefolds if you like the genre.

So the grumpy old man who grew up with such mysteries found a lot of excitement here, a 7 stars outta 10, a recommend.

most of the movie tanks

[killercharm · 4/10 · 2 March 2022]

This movie is kind of nowhere and it goes nowhere. The one thing done well in this flick is the videos that start to unhinge our hero. The videos are creepy and unsettling and intriguing. It's too bad the rest of the movie tanks. A widower who is now very alone finds reason to think there is a conspiracy, or at least linked up crimes are hinted at in a series of signal hijackings.

How to hijack television signals

[gedikreverdi · 6/10 · 22 October 2021]

It's slow. At times I really had difficulty with paying attention to the dialogues and what's going on. The acting isn't great. There's almost zero gore and just a very paranoid character slits his throat. The masks in the footages and the ending are pretty eerie tho. I think the main idea of the film is very intriguing but it felt a bit too slow for the most part.

His wife has been missing so every time there's a signal hijacking, there's a woman that goes missing prior to that. When he saw this pattern, he became obsessed and he swore to find out who did those hijackings. There's a young woman that was following her. And she helped him with the investigation and when he woke up one day after they talked to the owner of the storage unit. The motel room and his house were wrecked and he watched another footage and made out the location from the footage. He found the guy in a dilapidated house with the set of those footages and he forced him to do the confession video with a mask on and killed him. He buried him in the garden. The ending was quite creepy. He hit someone with his car. It was the robot bride bleeding on the asphalt.

Slower than a snail's pace...

[byron-116 · 4/10 · 25 October 2021]

...and even much slower! Is Broadcast Signal Intrusion a mystery or is it horror Horror? Or perhaps drama? The film tries all of these, but in vain. I am surprised that other viewers of this film gave it higher ratings....

This review contains a detailed attempt at making sense of this messy script...

[fedor8 · 20 April 2023]

On the positive side, I was intrigued and interested most of the time, and the movie is professionally shot, it isn't B-movie amateurism. The mystery is unusual - certainly far more original than what we get from tons of mindless thrillers that are all about invincible, time/space-bending psycho-killers who seem to have more power than Beelzebub and his pals Baphomet and Belial.

No such BS here. It's not about blood, guts and wounded cops running through abandoned factories. It's not about an omniscient serial-killer who easily predicts the actions of 50 cops, 7 detectives and 115 screaming victims, as if he were a demon from Hell's loins. It's a genuine mystery...

Except that it has no resolution. Zero. The big negative is the ending, which is random, meaningless, incomplete, lazy and "artsy". I can't stand films with sudden endings, they always smell of desperation.

There's the obvious possibility, or at least theory, that the protagonist, James, is the killer. Certainly that would explain the dubious, extraordinarily huge "coincidence" of him getting involved in an urban-legend-like mystery that may lead to his wife's murderer. Or the fact that he finds the elusive 3rd tape in his flat, marked by his own writing - which would 100% mean James killed her. Or the fact that in a very early scene he has a vision of his wife wearing that mask - and that's before he even saw one of those mysterious tapes. Unless there was supernatural involvement, of which there is no real evidence, James would appear to have to be the killer.

But there are so many problems with that explanation - which is, sadly, the only half-way viable explanation, because everything else that happens is random nonsense, disconnected. Interesting nonsense, but from a logical standpoint utter hooey, none of which ties up with anything else. I don't mean that it doesn't tie in neatly, I mean that all of those characters and events don't connect at all, in any way shape or form. They can't. They are random dead-ends devised either to annoy us, fascinate (then disappoint) us, or because the writer was completely lost.

Yes, a lost and confused witter tearing the hair off his head in frustration as he sits over his laptop trying to write something good. Cinema-goers trust writers and directors way too implicitly, hence so often end up making excuse for the film's failings, not realizing that most writers are struggling semi-hacks or total dilettantes, not at all the "(mis)understood geniuses" that fans fantasize about. Cinema-goers overrate film-makers' intellects far too often and too much. They idealize them because cinema-goers live in a fantasy world, they are more disconnected (on average) than people who watch films only sporadically. It's no coincidence that the vast majority of film fanatics are Reds: delusion and confusion are part-and-parcel of their beings. They are pushovers for propaganda, they are naive, they are child-like, yet often pretentious. But that's another story...

Going back to why the "James the killer" theory doesn't work... Firstly, he seems genuinely upset about the death of his wife and/or her disappearance. (The details of her disappearance aren't clarified, which is a bit pathetic. We don't know anything abut how she disappeared, whether her body was found, nothing.) Unless he is a textbook case of a mega-schizophrenic, there is no way he could be her killer, and the killer of the two other women. There is no way he'd go through all that trouble just to miraculously "forget" that he killed them all, to "fix them". Did he have amnesia? If so, we should have been told when and how he lost his memory. He names "fixing phones" as his only hobby, which might be a hint that he is the "fixer" i.e. Women-killer, that he needs to "fix" women. Though why kill two random women at such large intervals (years in-between) then end with the murder of his own wife? Serial-killers don't murder their own wives. It's certainly extremely rare.

Then there's that guy he accuses of being the killer. His behaviour is not that of an innocent person, especially not with that semi-evil smirk he gives while tied and sitting in "the room". Besides, if he wasn't the killer how would he know where the clips were filmed? Unless this guy is a figment of James's schizo imagination? Or maybe he exists but James sees him as James chooses to? In this case the director would be not only manipulating the viewer, he'd be toying with us, giving us nothing. Which would be garbage writing.

And that's when we run into the next problem... If James is schizo and the entire film is shown through his mind, then NOTHING that appears on screen has any meaning whatsoever. If James is the killer then the director completely failed to help us distinguish between the real world and James's fantasy world - something a competent, wise director would have to do for such a "split-reality" or "alternating reality" script. If he is the killer then NONE of the other characters might be real. Not to mention all the other problems I already listed about this theory...

Besides, this protagonist-is-real-killer-and-he's-insane-too twist is nothing new. It's been done before. Protagonist's insanity has been worked to death in thrillers and horror films, even dramas. If it is true that James is the killer that would not only be far-fetched, it would be unoriginal too. A cop-out even. Because "how do I solve this mess I created?" the writer might have asked himself as he started planning to write the last few pages. "Where do I go from here, how do I conclude this maze? Oh, I know, James is the killer! That way I don't have to explain the numerous loose ends and weird all-knowing characters that keep showing up out of literally nowhere". Or a computer that speaks directly to James... Or the clip addressing James by his name (which is more "proof" that he's crazy).

James being the killer would imply that the director had LIED all along, totally deceived the audience, which is a terrible way to "entertain" and to forge a story. Lying is easy, any moron can do it. Try telling the truth to the audience yet still manage to surprise them: that is the trick. Not many can do that, of course... It requires very clever and disciplined writing.

Still, because I had no idea that the story had no ending and that it was random drivel all along, I got a chance to be immersed in it to an extent. That's much better than being bored out of my skull, which is what most movies do...

Well executed little rabbit hole, with a couple of minor glitches ...

[hoytyhoytyhoyty · 7/10 · 5 February 2022]

The girl who turned up, "Alice" or whatever her name actually was, and her association with the smoking woman outside group therapy. That entire plot line just disappeared into nowhere, ACTUALLY disappeared! We could work out what was going on by inference, but it was still lazy.

Ditto the guy who committed suicide. Yes, yes, we get it, the obsession drove him crazy but come on. You can only leave so many un-tied threads before you don't have a tapestry anymore, you have a ball of twine that's going to end up in the bin.

The tacked-on ending. WHY, oh WHY must film makers do this?? I just ignored it. Once James had solved the mystery, him driving off in the car was enough of an ending, and there was still some beautiful ambiguity left behind for the audience's mind to work with.

Anyway, I still liked Broadcast Signal Intrusion a lot! It kept my attention after I expected it not to.

Do more and better, team!

OMG, Please stop rating inflation!

[armagecko · 3/10 · 31 December 2022]

How on earth anyone could rate this movie more than two or three stars is beyond me. Yes, the acting is surprisingly decent. Yes, the idea is clever and interesting. Yes, the cinematography is appropriately moody. But the story MAKES NO SENSE!

I'm a huge fan of slow indy suspense. Give me Berberian Sound Studios, give me Mulholland Drive, give me Swimming Pool, give me Cache, any day and I will pop the corn and have an engaging & enjoyable experience. What I have zero tolerance for is a script which sets up purposefully ambiguous plotlines and follows through with NONE of them. Neither should you.

A great B-flick.

[Analog_Devotee · 8/10 · 8 May 2022]

The ending to this tale admittedly feels somewhat rushed, but nonetheless I was glued from start to finish. Haunted media is a favored niche of mine and it's rarely touched upon with any care or skill. While there are some hokey moments scattered throughout, there's evident meticulousness in regards to the subject matter feeling believable. Rope said great writing in with some great actors and eerie cinematography and you've got yourself a great time.

Highly recommended.

It's got it's faults, but there something interesting here.

[garethcrook · 6/10 · 4 October 2022]

Now this doesn't get many good reviews and it's a bit low budget, but it makes a lot of its limitations and I do love a bit of quirky independent cinema. In fact I'd rather that that some megawatt marvel franchise rubbish any day. Plus this eerie thriller's plot ticks my box. James (Harry Shum Jr.) is a tape archivist, in the 90s... obviously. 1999 to be precise, in Chicago. He's a precise kinda person. Messy but precise, if that makes any sense. Making sense might take a while here. It's purposefully dreamy. James seems haunted by a memory, one caught on some old footage. He's lost someone. Tape archives are eerie places, they look great on camera and old tape equipment looks great too, lots of buttons to push, digital displays, stuff loading in and out. It gives the editor endless opportunities to cut and set the pace, the tone, as James works the night shift, transferring and digitising all manner of unimportant stuff. That was the thing about the death of tape. Everyone was concerned about the loss of the footage as equipment became obsolete. It needed to be saved. The truth is it was always a dodgy medium and lends itself to psychological thrillers like this perfectly. There's no surprise when the tapes James is viewing, start to break down in static and reveal a freaky animatronic face with dead eyes and a glitchy mysterious audio track. Alright it's a bit tropey, but bear with me. All the tape stuff doesn't work without some context. James is pretty much alone in his world, trying to figure things out. Particularly around a sci-fi programme that gets mentioned on one of the newsreels he's watching. From someone who works the day shift who signs post-it notes as 'L', he learns that what he's witnessed is a broadcast intrusion and he, rather inexplicably decides he wants to get to the bottom of it. Searching for a missing tape, through creepy beta-max loving geeks and endless scrolling bulletin boards. It's a bit X-files or maybe Archive 81 is a better reference, although that does get a bit more supernatural. Here though it starts a bit more mundane. It's it just a prank? Subliminal messaging? The public needing to be protected, we're in the era of video nasties after all. These facts are all fine, but it's James' unspoken issues that seem to drag him in further. Well that and his ability to play tapes backward very slowly. Before long James connects his personal loss to the broadcast intrusions and off we go. It looks pretty slick. Grimy with some great locations. There's some good score too, dissident horns and twinkly percussion. The acting is passable, but Shun is good. The story is generally solid, but does get a bit fluffy and televisual in spots. The introduction of Alice (Kelley Mack) switches things up a bit. It takes all the pressure off James, with now having a co-conspirator to add things to his crime investigation wall. It's fun, a bit twisty chase through clues and leads, with lots of retro tech, dust and muted colours. It's not overly original but it deserves better reviews than it's got. That said, it's the chase that's the fun bit. As we're near it's conclusion it does unravel a bit. James' mad obsession influencing the screen perhaps a bit too much and there's far too many threads that don't go anywhere. It feels with a little more work this could've been really great, but it's still enjoyable.

Not very interesting ...

[parry_na · 4/10 · 19 November 2022]

Despite '60's supernatural soap 'Dark Shadows' making an appearance or two, and a villain that looks like 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation's Leatherface, this is a very talky, turgid affair.

The film goes through all the beats of being fascinating - vaguely arthouse direction, intense performances, much grandstanding - but really, it isn't. There's nothing for the viewer to latch on to and becomes frequently incomprehensible. As a result, it seems to go on for far longer than its 102 minutes.

A couple of creepy moments exist in a vacuum but aren't enough to generate much interest. When it ends, you'll wonder why you stuck it out for so long. My score is 4 out of 10.

Frustratingly wide of the mark

[Milk_Tray_Guy · 5/10 · 21 October 2023]

Had high hopes for this mystery-horror. The real life BSI phenomenon has always intrigued me. The movie draws inspiration from the (still unsolved) real life 1987 Max Headroom US signal hijackings, and the 2004 'I Feel Fantastic' internet videos, featuring Tara the android. The performances of Harry Shum Jr as lead character James, and Kelley Mack as his mysterious helper, Alice, are very good. The rest of the cast are pretty solid. Jacob Gentry's direction and Scott Thiele's cinematography create a strong sense of unease. The idea of James coming to terms with a recent loss whilst at the same time tracking the source of a series of mysterious broadcasts he stumbles across whilst cataloguing archive VHS recordings is one that pulls you in. The meetings with mysterious figures offering tantalising crumbs of information along the way wouldn't be out of place in The X-Files, whilst the sense of disassociation and other-worldliness put me in mind of The Last Broadcast (1998), Banshee Chapter (2013), and Censor (2021).

But despite looking great and having an interesting hook I found it a letdown. I like slow-burn thrillers/horrors - but they need a payoff. This... kinda did, but what exactly happens and the real answer to the mystery are never explained. Some movies lead you to a place where you have to work it out. This doesn't do that; it leaves you guessing - which isn't the same thing. There are a ton of fan-theories online about what it all means, what's/who's real, what/who isn't; but they're just that - fan-theories. There's nothing that fits perfectly. And despite some strong imagery that stays with you, I was left feeling I'd wasted my time. I'm sure the director can justify every choice he made, but for me he missed the mark. Good acting, premise, and atmosphere get it a 5/10.