SXSW Film Review: Broadcast Signal Intrusion

Harry Shum Jr. in SXSW 2021 Midnighter Broadcast Signal Intrusion

Watching Jacob Gentry’s Broadcast Signal Intrusion is similar to following yarn pulled across a bulletin board. From one clue to another, the film shoots through the mystery of an unsettling pirate broadcast – pushing pins in different places where answers might be. Are those answers real?

Maybe, but the truth gets murky in rabbit holes. But the paranoia and obsession on display from James (Harry Shum Jr.), a video archivist caught up in the film’s conspiracy, is clear.

The film is set in 1999-era Chicago, with much of period-setting coming from the outdated tech decorating James’ apartment and life. He’s stuck rewinding through the past – transferring tapes to CD for work with his wife’s death a recurring VCR whine underneath. Harry Shum Jr. plays the character with a haunted air, grief repressed into the hardest of emotional walls to protect himself. That is, until he becomes consumed with finding the creator of a series of signal interruptions that appear to be linked with several cases of missing women.

Like the bulletin board of an obsessive, the film lacks some connective tissue. The characters themselves are a bit too lightweight – though the actors layer subtle hints of depth in raised eyebrows, tired glances. What is here in abundance are wonderful flashes of discovery that tease the viewer with interesting tastes. There is fiction within fiction, shows that only exist within the film’s world – Don Cronos, a sci-fi show intruded upon by the pirate broadcast, and SAL-E Sparks, a sitcom whose main character is the inspiration for the plastic doll visage in the videos. James and his investigative partner, Alice (Kelley Mack), talk to strange men in rural, run-down houses who exude sinking feelings and question marks. Internet chatrooms, message boards buzz with people who can help James, as long as he doesn’t ask too many questions. Each element is familiar to any X-Files fan, or those who love to trawl old YouTube – itself rife with the sort of unexplained video footage that fills up Wikipedia page after page.

The bones and muscle of the plot run themselves at a good pace, almost more aerodynamic for the flesh they might lack. And as for the places where there is only yarn, trailing toward the next push pin in a Polaroid? They leave the viewer with the exact right amount of wanting to chase down that next clue.

Broadcast Signal Intrusion

Midnighters

World Premiere

Read our interview with director Jacob Gentry here.