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The film is set in 1999-era Chicago, with much of period-setting coming from the outdated tech decorating James’ apartment and life.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 inte
Jacob Gentry‘s evolution as a filmmaker remains fixated on electromagnetic waves (outside MTV’s
My Super Psycho Sweet 16 franchise) in the SXSW premiere
Broadcast Signal Intrusion. It’s a clash of science fiction imagery and novice sleuthing, as
Possessor-reminiscent masked interruptions splice between ’90s television programming until narrative beats transform into something more tensely true crime. At the core of Phil Drinkwater and Tim Woodall‘s screenplay? A ponderous assessment of media corruption and fame-chasing criminals. However, their means of subgenre hybridization sometimes fails the overall intrigue of a widower’s grief-sullen inquisition. There are camcorder moments that unsettle, almost as