Broadcast Signal Intrusion (2021)
Directed by Jacob Gentry
In the late 90s, a video archivist unearths a series of sinister pirate broadcasts and becomes obsessed with uncovering the dark conspiracy behind them.
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5 films that influenced Broadcast Signal Intrusion
What critics say influenced Broadcast Signal Intrusion
George Sluizer’s The Vanishing (1988, remade 1993) and David Fincher’s similarly Chicago-set Zodiac ( 2007) – both key cinematic reference points for the obsessiveness and paranoia of James’ quest – were notably made, or set, in what now seem historic periods.
As with George Sluizer’s The Vanishing (1993), grief and reason are overpowered by a need to know what happened to a loved one, and it’s a powerful force pushing James and viewers down a bleak and disturbing road.
For simplicity’s sake, below is a little vision board (of sorts) to help you visualize the tapes in question, including a photo from the unsolved Max Headroom Signal Hijacking of 1987 that inspired the film, a still from John Erick Dowdle’s The Poughkeepsie Tapes , and another from Milos Mitrovic & Conor Sweeney’s Homer_A (2017) .
There are camcorder moments that unsettle, almost as The Poughkeepsie Tapes accomplishes with its evidence footage, and yet clue-seeking thrills sell desired excitement short.
George Sluizer’s The Vanishing (1988, remade 1993) and David Fincher’s similarly Chicago-set Zodiac ( 2007) – both key cinematic reference points for the obsessiveness and paranoia of James’ quest – were notably made, or set, in what now seem historic periods.
For good measure, there’s also tips to David Fincher’s grimy worlds in “Seven” and “Zodiac,” reflected here with this film's Chicago environs.
Broadcast Signal Intrusion , a 2021 South by Southwest Midnighters debut directed by Jacob Gentry, fictionalizes that premise, in the guise of a “creepy tape” horror-thriller in the tradition of the Ring movies, folded into a desperate search for a serial killer, similar to David Fincher’s Zodiac .
While sometimes its own mystery ends up bogging down a bit of the film’s momentum, Broadcast Signal Intrusion is still a highly effective suspense-filled thriller that feels like Gentry tipping his hat to Zodiac as well as Brian De Palma, and yet, still sets out to do its own thing as well.
Moments of James staring straight into his monitor and going frame by frame to study the footage will bring to mind moments of Ethan Hawke watching Super 8 footage in Sinister , where the film invites us to lean in and look for something that might not actually be there.
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Broadcast Signal Intrusion is a conspiracy thriller like David Robert Mitchell’s Under The Silver Lake (2018), where our protagonist appears as slippery and suspect as those involved in the plot that he is uncovering (or at least imagining), even as it becomes ever harder to pinpoint the borderline where his nightmares end and reality begins.