Broadcast Signal Intrusion (2021)

directed by Jacob Gentry

USA

103 minutes

3.5 stars out of 5

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There's absolutely nothing about this movie that didn't appeal to me, so as soon as I heard about it I was anxiously awaiting its release. I've mentioned this before, but I devour anything related to video horror, real-life broadcast signal intrusions, cursed/haunted tapes, &c. Analog horror is my favorite thing ever. But to be honest, while I did like Broadcast Signal Intrusion, I realized partway through that the way I think of broadcast signal intrusions is fundamentally different from the way this film approaches them, and for that (entirely personal and subjective) reason, this wasn't all that I thought it would be. It's still pretty great though.

I won't spend a ton of time explaining this, because it's personal and has nothing to do with the movie itself, but the reason why it differed from my expectations was because broadcast signal intrusions are shelved alongside paranormal phenomena in my brain. No, I don't mean that I think ghosts did the Max Headroom Incident, or anything like that. But the deep mystery of unsolved pirate broadcasts, their clandestine nature, the way they use such bizarre and intentionally scary imagery instead of a simple demand for money or fame, means that when I think of them, they're inextricably tied to supernatural horror. Broadcast Signal Intrusion the movie is hardly a horror film. It definitely has horror DNA, and I could feel a love for the genre, but it is a dark thriller with nothing supernatural to be seen.

Let no one say that this movie does not speak the language, though. It's clear to me that the people who made this are very familiar with the history of pirate broadcasts, and everything involved in the film's lore is a reference to real events. I absolutely adored this. This film goes deep - it doesn't just mention television, it creates at least two whole fictional series that felt and sounded like things that could really have aired in the 80s. "Doc Cronos" is a clear nod to the fact that the Max Headroom Incident occurred during a broadcast of Doctor Who. And the intrusions themselves are works of horror art. They're obvious references to I Feel Fantastic (Hey Hey Hey), which, while not a pirate broadcast, is a classic example of Weird Internet that I've watched more times than I can count. Because of the way it uses these references to legends of unexplained video weirdness, I fell in love with Broadcast Signal Intrusion even though it didn't approach its subject matter the same way I think of it. There's a deep admiration for horror woven into this film's aesthetic, and it groks the details of what it depicts, even if it doesn't attribute anything otherworldly to them.

As much as it physically and psychically pains me that "retro" movies are now set within a year or two of my birth, the late-90s setting of this film is pretty on point. I like first-generation analog horror more - stuff that was actually made when people were using VHS tapes - but that feels like an unfair statement given movies like this and others akin to it that have such an obvious love for the dead format. Now that VHS tapes are largely vanished, we can examine what they meant to us and how they could have been used for specific purposes that they never really were. This film doesn't "pass" as something made in 1999, but it doesn't have to. It's about that time period, not a 1:1 imitation of it.

The only place where I felt like this faltered a bit was in its depiction of the protagonist's interpersonal relationships and, I guess, its characterization of the protagonist himself. Essentially: the people are the weak part. I realized after I'd finished the movie that there was little to nothing distinguishing the main character's deceased wife from being a sister or a friend. This isn't necessarily a complaint, because at least it skipped any kind of saccharine, forced-feeling flashback sequences, but also I was left not able to relate that well to the main character's desperate need to find her, because all I knew of her was a few shots in which her face isn't even visible. And the protag himself is a bit of a blank slate - again, not a big deal, and Harry Shum Jr. plays him with enough weight that he does feel like a real person, but knowing even just a little more about this guy would have helped me get more immersed in his story.

But this movie gets a pass for that and a lot of other things because, like I said, it speaks the language. It is a little messy on the technical side of things, but not too bad. It doesn't feel like it's just co-opting the aesthetic without having done its research. The climax was a little disappointing because it was the culmination of what I had realized early on about it basically being a crime movie with a taste for analog horror, and the tease of true weirdness (that one last shot of the masked figure) that only served to enforce the main character's drifting mental state was the cherry on top of that. However I still have a high opinion of this movie because it is very good at what it does outside of my personal preferences. It is actually impressive how much Jacob Gentry has grown as a filmmaker.