BROADCAST SIGNAL INTRUSION (2021)

Studio:      Dark Sky Films
Director:    Jacob Gentry
Writer:      Phil Drinkwater, Tim Woodall
Producer:  Nicola Goelzhaeuser, Giles Edwards, Brett Hays, Greg Newman
Stars:     Harry Shum Jr., Kelley Mack, Justin Welborn, Chris Sullivan, Jennifer Jelsema, Steven Pringle, Michael B. Woods, Arif Yampolsky

Review Score:

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Summary:

A video archivist unearths a bizarre conspiracy that connects cases of TV signal hijacking to a string of unsolved disappearances.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

While archiving news broadcast videotapes for a local television station in 1999 Chicago, James uncovers an unsettling broadcast signal intrusion (BSI). The 1987 footage depicts a person in a wig and white mask making bizarre movements with garbled audio.

James learns about a second 1987 BSI that interrupted a rerun of the sci-fi show “Don Cronos.” James tries to find the station’s copy of the broadcast, but discovers that the FCC seized it.

From a payphone, James calls another archive and discovers that not only is their copy of the BSI also missing, but the FBI is supposed to be notified of anyone inquiring about it. James immediately hangs up. James notices a young woman in a hoodie watching him from across the street.

Chester, an underground videophile who uses James for camera repair work, provides James with a copy of the second BSI. The strange footage again features someone in a wig and white mask. Chester refers to the two BSIs as ‘The Sal-E Sparx Incident,’ which got its name because the broadcast pirate’s disguise was modeled after a character from the sitcom ‘Stepbot,’ in which a widow created an android to care for his five children.

James digs into the BSIs on BBS message boards for conspiracy theorists. James’s research identifies a report on the incidents written by former FCC bureau chief Dr. Stuart Lithgow.

James visits Dr. Lithgow, who tells James he does not have a copy of his report. However, Lithgow mentions several rumors surrounding the case, including that the footage supposedly contains a subliminal message and that there may have been a third Sal-E Sparx intrusion on cable access on November 23, 1996. James notes that this date is one day after his wife Hannah disappeared and presumably died. Lithgow remarks that the FBI ultimately closed the case as an unsolved mystery.

James becomes obsessed with the BSI footage as he continues to suspect he is being followed. Upon closely examining audio from one of the tapes, James believes he hears the masked person say, “I fixed them all.”

James brings his research back to Dr. Lithgow. James shows Lithgow that the footage was shot on a set and a man’s face can be seen reflected in a window. James insists that the pirate was trying to communicate a message, but Lithgow warns James against going down a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories.

Additional message board research links the Sal-E Sparx intrusions to cases of missing women. Someone anonymously sends James articles and information on Fredrica Sexton, who disappeared one day before the first BSI, and Marie Bedford, who disappeared the day before the second BSI. James speculates his wife Hannah might therefore connect to a third BSI if it exists.

Antique dealer P.T. Gieger arranges to meet James through the message boards. Gieger offers to give James a copy of the FBI’s file on the Sal-E Sparx incident, which Gieger claims can help locate the missing women, if James delivers a mysterious package to a man named Macalister in Chinatown. James agrees.

Macalister turns out to be a drifter driven mad from digging into the case and being unable to solve it. Macalister warns that James similarly will not find what he is looking for.

James returns home to find the FBI report at his door. After reading it, James calls Lithgow to convey his new theory that the broadcast signal intrusions are a killer’s confessions.

James notices the hooded woman stalking him at the payphone again. The woman follows James into a bar where she identifies herself as Alice. Alice claims she only followed James as a random hobby, not for a specific reason. James and Alice commiserate about their exes over drinks and form a connection. James brings Alice back to his apartment.

James wakes in the morning to find Alice watching the BSI footage. Alice identifies beeping noises as a phone number in Morse code. Alice bargains to translate the phone number in exchange for a temporary place to stay. James calls the number and hears a prerecorded message with more unsettling sounds.

Macalister shows up outside the apartment building. Macalister warns James that the missing women are a dead end and James has to follow the tapes instead. James tries calming Macalister as he grows increasingly agitated. Alice comes downstairs in time to witness Macalister slitting his own throat in front of James. Worried that they are unsafe, James and Alice flee to a motel.

Alice traces the coded phone number to a storage unit in Peoria. James and Alice drive there and find only a working phone connected to an answering machine inside the unit. Facility manager Brad tells the two of them that someone has auto-paid for the unit on a standing order since 1987, but he refuses to reveal the person’s identity. Brad then receives a phone call. Unexpectedly, Brad suddenly warms to James and Alice and tells them that the unit belongs to Stephen Meyer.

James and Alice stake out Stephen Meyer’s post office box. Stephen eventually shows up and the couple confronts him. Stephen has James and Alice follow him back to his house. There, Stephen explains that he was a teenage hacker, or “phreaker,” who helped rich classmates create the broadcast intrusions and elaborate mystery simply to mess with people. James and Alice hear odd noises upstairs that Stephen instructs them to ignore. James questions Stephen’s claim that the BSIs were merely a prank. When James asks about Fredrica Sexton, Stephen stops talking and makes the couple leave.

Back at their motel, James continues questioning Stephen’s story. Alice tells James they now have an answer and he should let it go. James says he still needs to find the third tape.

James wakes in the morning to find Alice vanished with his BSI tapes. James revisits Gieger’s antique store, but discovers it is boarded up. James returns home to find his place ransacked.

Amongst his things, James recovers a videotape of his wife Hannah’s ballet performance on public access television. The tape contains the third broadcast signal intrusion. In the footage, James sees a unique scar on the masked man’s hand.

With his mind unraveling, James calls Lithgow demanding to know if the third tape is real. Lithgow only responds cryptically before the call goes dead.

James reexamines the third BSI and identifies a rural location in the background. James drives there in the dark and seemingly hits something in the road. James has a vision that he ran over a Sal-E Sparx automaton that bleeds black blood and “dies.”

James investigates a remote house where he meets Michael Gardner. James notices the distinctive scar on Michael’s hand. When the phone suddenly rings, a fight breaks out. James subdues Michael and takes him captive.

James shows Michael the third BSI and demands to know why he made it. Michael claims he wasn’t responsible and repeatedly insists James doesn’t understand the whole story.

James forces Michael to take him to where the set used for the BSIs was located. James uses leftover props to rebuild the set. He then forces Michael to wear the mask while recording Michael reading a confession for kidnapping and killing the three women. Michael again pleads that nothing is what it looks like, but reads the confession under duress.

After finishing the recording, James kills Michael and buries him outside. James hears the Sal-E Sparx theme song playing on a television inside Michael’s house.

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Review:

If you’ve never seen the original broadcast signal intrusions (BSI) that inspire the starting point for “Broadcast Signal Intrusion,” consider watching them before watching the movie. They aren’t essential for following the fictional story, though they do help frame the film’s bizarre feeling.

During a November 1987 news broadcast on WGN in Chicago, someone in a Max Headroom mask hijacked the station’s transmission. For a few strange seconds, “Max” swayed from side to side while peculiar noises crackled and a sheet of wavy metal spun in the background.

Things got weirder later that night during a “Doctor Who” rerun over on WTTW. This time, for almost a full minute and a half, the masked Max giggled some garbled nonsense, screamed several times, and moaned out puzzling messages. The intrusion ended with Max claiming, “They’re coming to get me!” before pulling down his pants so a woman could spank his bare ass with a flyswatter. It sounds amusing, because it is. Yet the combination of distorted audio, swirling metal square, and overall oddness makes the footage as creepy as it is comical. As of 2021, no one knows who committed these acts, which are federal crimes, let alone why.

“Broadcast Signal Intrusion” begins similarly, but more ominously. While transferring videotapes for a local TV station, James stumbles across a nightly news interruption from 1987 where someone in a weird white mask and black wig makes mannequin-like movements over disorienting audio. Looking into the incident leads James to discover a second BSI whose footage, which again consists of a masked figure behaving erratically, seems straight out of an experimental horror movie, or possibly a serial killer’s home videos. Nothing criminal occurs on either tape. James remains intrigued all the same.

Curiosity quickly takes James down a rabbit hole. Official channels dead-end in missing files or else trigger FBI flags for simply inquiring about the matter. On BBS message boards however, James finds a whole host of amateur investigators offering interpretations, explanations, and information. Some connect the pirate broadcasts to a string of unsolved kidnappings. This hits close to home since James’s wife Hannah vanished one year ago. James thinks he may find some surrogate sort of closure if he can solve this riddle. Except the closer he comes to the truth, the more James opens himself to a possible conspiracy that consumes his mind before threatening to destroy his entire life too.

“Broadcast Signal Intrusion” is a telecommunications-based paranoia thriller very much in the vein of classics like Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Conversation” and Brian De Palma’s “Blow Out.” Hazy details and cryptic clues drop a breadcrumb trail to keep the mystery humming at a steady pace. The movie doesn’t rely on ambiguity enough to qualify as an atmosphere-dependent arthouse amble, although “Broadcast Signal Intrusion” absolutely makes mood an integral component of its attractiveness.

Following in Coppola and De Palma’s footsteps, director Jacob Gentry starts by serving his setup on a plate of New Age noir. Thick shafts of darkness lean across every interior. Exteriors are shot beneath overcast skies. A sad trumpet warbles on the score as though foreshadowing a fedora-pinching gumshoe about to narrate his troubles with some dame. This slice of Chicago is a hard-boiled place populated by lonely-hearted people, and sound and cinematography terrifically reflect that tone.

The setting doesn’t always stay with this smoky detective theme. Other aspects of composer Ben Lovett’s music fill out with Lalo Schifrin la-la-las reminiscent of “The Amityville Horror.” Echoing piano keys sound readymade for a broadcast TV movie circa Jimmy Carter’s administration. Hearing such strains under the haunted hero’s deepening descent into an obsessive investigation brings to mind “The Norliss Tapes” or “Kolchak: The Night Stalker” when “Broadcast Signal Intrusion” summons the vibe of a Dan Curtis production marrying procedural crime with diabolical ‘70s horror.

The film takes place in 1999, but also incorporates references to ‘80s sitcom “Small Wonder” as well as the notorious “Doctor Who” interruption. “Doctor Who” assumes the form of “Don Cronos,” a knockoff that recreates fast and cheap British sci-fi so accurately, it doesn’t look any different than a clip from “Blake’s 7.” “Broadcast Signal Intrusion’s” version of “Small Wonder” is “Stepbot,” whose lead character, an android created to care for a widow’s five children, is what the broadcast pirate disturbingly disguises himself as. While continuing to stir together these various eras, “Broadcast Signal Intrusion” takes viewers on an eclectic neo-pulp tour through an unnerving underworld of cobwebbed cellars, dimly-lit dive bars, alleyways slicked with rain puddles, and shady meetings underneath waterfront train tracks.

Another work “Broadcast Signal Intrusion” mirrors is Joe Berlinger’s Netflix documentary about Elisa Lam and the Cecil Hotel, a real-life instance of self-made internet sleuths losing perspective by connecting coincidences into a conspiracy. The movie ends much like Lam’s true tragedy: in a last stop that isn’t as satisfyingly shocking as the sinister shadows suggested. Someone could defend “Broadcast Signal Intrusion’s” disappointing denouement by reasoning that reality rarely turns out to be as revelatory as what an imagination invents. Nevertheless, that fact still hinders this film.

In spite of erecting an alluring cinemascape that skillfully funnels its influences, “Broadcast Signal Intrusion’s” script bears scars in need of bandaging. If I were scoring the movie solely as a narrative, a full star would be deducted at a minimum. The conclusion in particular curls a loose-fingered fist that only packs a limp punch. After losing speed down a stretch that detours into overlong misdirects and inconsequential asides, “Broadcast Signal Intrusion” backs into a corner where it can’t help but peter out because, like the unsolved incidents that inspired the premise, it isn’t quite sure how to end. “Broadcast Signal Intrusion” gives up on giving out concrete answers to instead coast on the strength of its stylish psychological chills.

Regardless of the fiction’s frustrating flaws, affinity for the amalgamation of homages can hypnotically hook viewers into the movie’s weird world. I might have intermittently lost interest in the plot’s stalling tactics if not for the intoxicating dread permeating the drama. The film is not consistently tense, but it is consistently textured. “Broadcast Signal Intrusion” breathes the air of a vaguely nightmarish limbo where unspecified evils seemingly threaten every step, even though nothing substantive comes from much of the suspense.

Normally, a mix of ‘40s noir, ‘60s sci-fi, ‘80s sitcoms, and small screen fright films of the ‘70s tossed in a late ‘90s setting might make for a noisy mish-mash of confusingly conflicted callbacks. Here however, “Broadcast Signal Intrusion” collects an assembly of touchstones that becomes as uniquely unusual as a man in a Max Headroom mask humming the theme to “Clutch Cargo” while spoofily shilling Coca-Cola. By coloring all of this nostalgia with creepiness, the movie captures the entrancing eeriness of an actual broadcast signal intrusion in feature film form, and you almost always feel those creeps pimpling flesh from the underside of your skin.

Review Score: 80

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