FrightFest 2023: ‘Transmission’ is nothing but static

You can’t say Michael Hurst isn’t ambitious. He most certainly swings big and takes risks. Even if they don’t pay off, he at least makes some creative choices that are far from plain. His new feature, Transmission, tinkers with fractured, nonlinear storytelling as a way to creepy-crawl under the fingernails. Its wonky approach jolts the system and isn’t entirely effective. In fact, cobbled-together clips make for a jumbled mess and detract from a promising found-footage-style premise.

An elderly gentleman plops down in his recliner for a night of television. As he flips through the channels, he comes across several news stories about suicide, murder, and a hostage situation. In between these grisly telecasts, the man stumbles across a broadcast for a children’s show, a midnight riff on Elvira’s Movie Macabre, and a mockumentary focused on a famed director who went missing. His final film, Transmission, also playing on the boob-tube, might be the key to unlocking his whereabouts – or at the very least what led up to his disappearance and a ritualistic murder. With events set in Santa Mira, California, the film begs the audience to stick around, as it switches erratically between each channel. The stories don’t have much in common at first, but as they unravel, the picture becomes clearer. They’re all interconnected, somehow randomly slotting together like a kids’ buggered and sticky puzzle.

Transmission tests the viewer’s patience. Its sluggish pace deflates the story, with the finale coming in with a whimper. Any revelations feel far from earned – and rather shoehorned in for the sake of injecting some semblance of an interesting subplot. The film is, however, expertly filmed and enticing enough to warrant its existence. Buried beneath the rubble, there are shining gems of ideas, particularly as they relate to our collective fascination with murder and our obsession with screens. If some fat had been trimmed, Transmission would be far more than just annoying static.

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