Film Review – Broadcast Signal Intrusion (2021)
As welcomed and embraced as futurism in cinema is, as moviegoers we too openly accept and have a soft spot for rewinding to retroism and the eras of yesteryear.
Not every single film released out of Hollywood or by independent filmmakers has to be pioneering or the next this or that. Sometimes utilising modern technology and storytelling to recall back to older pastiches can be equally as inventive and equally as entertaining.
In Jacob Gentry‘s 2021 film Broadcast Signal Intrusion, he does just that.
Starring Harry Shum Jr., the horror-thriller film is set in the tale-end of the 90s where a video archivist unearths a series of sinister pirate broadcasts and becomes obsessed with uncovering the conspiracy behind them.
Similarly to Prano Bailey-Bond’s marvellous horror-thriller Censor, Broadcast Signal Intrusion is an exercise in a investigatory quandary that leads to eventual psychological mania.
James (Shum Jr.) – our protagonist, works as a video archivist for a local television station in Chicago. Discovering a tape that contains a broadcast signal intrusion (BSI) of a disguised person acting strangely, James’ intrigue is aroused. Taking it upon himself to find out more about this rare BSI occurrence, James investigates further, quickly uncovering the existence of a similar BSI that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) tried to eradicate any public acknowledgement.
Falling further and further down the rabbit hole of these bizarre instances, James detects a possible conspiracy of the disappearance of several women, including his wife Hannah, that may be linked to the two BSI incidents.
Where Censor and Broadcast Signal Intrusion share similarities in terms of their respective narratives, themes and adoration for nostalgia, Gentry‘s film is delivered less as a straight-forward, true-blue horror-thriller and more like a neo-noir film that incorporates motifs of horror cinema.
Tonally speaking, Broadcast Signal Intrusion observes James as he plunges deeper and deeper into his unproven, presumptuous conspiracy theory, eventually leading him into a state of megalomania and delusion. His agitated fight for validation is gradual, tedious and maddening, much like Enid’s campaign to find the whereabouts of her long-lost sister in Bailey-Bond’s Censor. Where the two differ in their delivery is that Gentry’s film relies more on noir nuances of paranoia and revenge, compared to horror nuances of vulnerability and anxiety.
Helping create the sense of paranoia is a trumpet-driven, string-heavy noir-inspired score from Ben Lovett that sounds as if it was lifted from Billy Wilder‘s Sunset Boulevard or any peak year Hitchcock thriller. Throughout the runtime, its use of trumpets, horns and strings are progressively amped up for maximum impact in create a tone of suspense, dread and mystique. Hearing an original score that could have been used in any RKO noir film of the 40s and 50s for a film made in 2021 is both refreshing and juxtaposing. Lovett‘s score is absolutely stellar!
More noir elements Gentry‘s film embodies are in the diagetic language that writers Phil Drinkwater and Tim Woodall use. With lines like, “Some threads aren’t worth picking at” and “Don’t mistake for conspiracy what can be chalked up to coincidence”, Broadcast Signal Intrusion even has an elusive but equally expository, old-school measure of
dialogue.
The film, unfortunately, isn’t without its flaws.
Suffering from some pacing issues, about midway into the runtime, an evasive figure that stalks James reveal themselves to be someone of service to his ongoing inspection. The lone crusade James enrols himself upon turns into a tag-team effort, somewhat spoiling the authenticity of its noir characteristics. And while it doesn’t necessarily take anything away from or add anything to the overall narrative, it does however feel as if its forcibly put in place to stretch out the runtime, slowing it down and blemishing the consistency of its
suspenseful output.
Furthermore, Gentry‘s film isn’t a particularly showy one despite being a neo-noir horror thriller hybrid. The cinematography falls short of any standout finesse. With the exception of one brief scene that uses Dutch angle camera shots and a quick-fire foray of various dissolves and wipe transitioning cuts, Broadcast Signal Intrusion isn’t as stylish or intricate comparatively to a Double Indemnity or Vertigo for example.
The horror within Drinkwater and Woodall‘s screenplay is differentiating. Dispensed as a slow-burning ascent into a chaotic finale, tension is gingerly built up over time with each twist and turn the story takes like a fully fledged thriller film does. But when the third act begins and comes to its climax, the reward may not be fully recompensating to all audiences as it is widely left open for interpretation.
Moreover, aesthetically speaking, the horror of Broadcast Signal Intrusion minimal. The viscera is fleeting, leaving a lot left to be desired. By far and away the frightening moments of the film are within the pirated broadcasts James examines. The person within the broadcasts disguised as fictitious robotic woman Sal-E Sparks, wearing a horrifying rubber mask and wig have a nightmarish quality that are comparably to the sequence of events in the tape within The Ring film series. And it’s worth noting the the mask used in the BSI tapes looks vaguely similar to the one Leatherface dons in the closing scene of Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation – cheap, nasty, blatantly unrealistic and a trigger for anyone who suffers from astihophobia (the fear of latex and rubber).
Back to the positives, the eye for detail for retroism in Broadcast Signal Intrusion is sublime and the acting is impressive.
On the whole, the film feels like sincere ode to broadcast television and analog recording through perverse storytelling. The on-screen cataloguing and preservation of video tapes and video players is a nostalgic elegy to the rewatchability and opportunistic chance to fully understand and analyse subject matter at face value and deeper than face value, for a mostly dead physical media. And with lines like, “Wanna hang out and rent a tape from
Blockbuster?”, the retrospective sentimentally of Broadcast Signal Intrusion is pensive.
Harry Shum Jr. is utterly arresting as James. His unhurried but assured descent into obsessive hysteria is a performance clinic. Despite being slightly less accessible as an emotive body of work in comparison to Prano Bailey-Bond‘s Censor, the resemblance between Shum Jr. and Niamh Algar‘s performances would make them a perfect double bill.
Ultimately, though it wears its neo-noir uniform unashamedly, Broadcast Signal Intrusion nonetheless feels like a breath of fresh air. The plot may not be groundbreaking in its message, however its old-fashioned delivery is unorthodox in the modern-era of filmmaking. It’s a low-budget film with high concept storytelling. A film Hollywood will more than likely capitalise on and water down for audiences that lack the capacity to unlock its themes for themselves without conclusive explanation.
★★★1/2
Crime, Horror | USA, 2021 | 15 | Limited UK Cinema, 25th March / Digital & Blu-ray 28th March | Lightbulb Film Distribution | Dir.Jacob Gentry | Harry Shum Jr., Chris Sullivan, Kelley Mack, Steve Pringle, Justin Welborn
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