midnightmosesuk

I watched Broadcast Signal Intrusion on Nyx this evening, and it's one of those films that gets under your skin rather than jumps out at you - which is, I think, far more interesting. It's an odd little beast: part conspiracy thriller, part urban legend come to life, and part quiet meditation on grief and obsession.

The film follows James, a video archivist who stumbles across these deeply disturbing pirate broadcasts from the '80s and '90s. If you're anything like me and remember the Max Headroom broadcast hijacking or those weird old VHS creepypastas floating around online, it all feels eerily familiar, but the film keeps it tantalisingly vague - you never get the full picture, and that's what makes it linger.

What I liked most is how it refuses to give you easy answers. The deeper James digs, the further away the truth seems, until the mystery almost becomes a stand-in for his own haunted past. And the broadcasts themselves? Genuinely unsettling. There's something uniquely horrific about a flickering mask and garbled audio that no glossy horror monster could match.

That said, it's definitely a slow burn. It won't be everyone's cup of tea, and I can imagine a fair few people coming away feeling frustrated that nothing is neatly tied up. But personally, I think that's the point: obsession rarely has a clean ending.

Overall, Broadcast Signal Intrusion is the kind of film that feels like finding a half-erased tape in an old charity shop bin: strange, a bit broken, but somehow impossible to stop thinking about. It crawls around the edges of your mind long after the credits roll - and really, isn't that what good horror should do?

I recently watched the first film of this apparent trilogy, The Old Guard and, for all it's faults, found it vaguely amusing. It seemed like we were in cut-price Highlander territory with a bunch of immortal warriors living in secret among us mortals. Only this time, instead lopping each other's heads off, they're busy lopping off the heads of countless villainous goons who are working for a pharmaceutical company. It was all a bit silly but fun.

I found the second film to be no better than the first really. Well choreographed fight scenes and some OK acting from the cast. There was a cheeky little retcon though. It involves Nile stabbing Andy. In the first film Andy was stabbed in the shoulder by Nile but I'm sure she healed from that. In this film something is different about that incident. They switched things about a bit. Apart from that, it was OK and it is set up for a sequel now so we'll see if number 3 is better than 1&2.