Broadcast signal intrusion reviews movie#
Broadcast signal intrusion reviews series#
Broadcast signal intrusion reviews tv#

Broadcast signal intrusion reviews movie#

I feel like what kills Broadcast Signal Intrusion as movie is that it feels like it goes on for way too long, Harry Shum Jr gives a solid performance.

Broadcast signal intrusion reviews series#

What a wasted opportunity, especially since it starts off so promisingly.In the late 90s, a video archivist unearths a series of sinister pirate broadcasts and becomes obsessed with uncovering the dark conspiracy behind them. The premise is great and the opening act really gets under your skin, but BROADCAST SIGNAL INTRUSION just has no clue what to do with itself, with Gentry incorrectly assuming that one De Palma shout-out after another will be enough get the job done (and judging from its 71% standing on Rotten Tomatoes, enough critics felt the same way). The mystery takes James to a storage unit in Peoria that leads a long sequence with a weirdo played by THIS IS US' Chris Thompson that's just time-wasting misdirection whose only purpose is to shamelessly rip off the basement scene in ZODIAC, culminating in an ending that.I don't know what the hell it is. The intriguing, unsettling set-up gets bogged down in what soon becomes an utterly nonsensical BLOW OUT knockoff, complete with split-screens, a slo-mo set piece with a Pino Donaggio-style cue, a split diopter shot, and a partner for Harry in Alice (Kelley Mack), whose character makes no sense, has no bearing on anything that happens, and ultimately disappears from the film, existing only because Gentry is paying homage to BLOW OUT and needs a Nancy Allen stand-in to work with James. So far so good, right? Well, that's when director Jacob Gentry (one of the trio behind the 2008 cult horror anthology film THE SIGNAL) just loses the thread and stops just short of trespassing at Brian De Palma's house and going through his recycle bin. Continuing to dig, James discovers that each signal intrusion-a week apart-took place the day after the disappearances of two Chicago women, and he soon uncovers a third signal intrusion that took place the day after his wife vanished.

Still grieving the disappearance and presumed death of his wife three years earlier, James quickly-perhaps too quickly to be plausible-grows obsessed with finding the source of the signal intrusion, and he gets stonewalled by a call to the FCC, who reveal that there's an FBI file on those incidents. Soon, there's another where he manages to isolate what's being said: 'I fixed them. While copying a 1987 rerun of a DOCTOR WHO-type syndicated sci-fi series, he catches a glimpse of a ten-second broadcast signal intrusion, a sort-of primitive, analog-era hack, showing a masked figure delivering an indecipherable message.

Broadcast signal intrusion reviews tv#

James (CRAZY RICH ASIANS' Harry Shum Jr) works for a TV station, transferring VHS and Beta tapes of ancient broadcasts to DVD. That said, BROADCAST SIGNAL INTRUSION sounds like the exact kind of thing that would be my jam, and its opening half hour is overflowing with creepy-as-fuck analog vibes set in 1999 Chicago.

Maybe it's ongoing PTSD from the first viewing of PRINCE OF DARKNESS in theaters when I was 14, but I remain a sucker for any horror movie with garbled audio transmissions and creepy, static-filled video images.