Written, directed, shot and edited by David Bruckner, Jacob Gentry and Dan Bush. A transmission that looks like bad video art takes over the TV sets of a city called Terminus, and makes people kill people. The one good idea in this horror indie—conceived, if not executed, as an Exquisite Corpse exercise—is that the uncrazed find it prudent to kill the crazed in pre-emptive self-defense. It’s hard to tell who is and who isn’t, isn’t it? Everyone is armed and manic. “Are you mad at me for killing your friend?” an uncrazed character asks one of the likeminded. At least until that plasma screen turns itself on and does its mesmerizing. Gore goes improv as first-time killers get up to speed. Hallucinations get the better of a dwindling band of survivors. Not a lot of thought went into the mechanism of the signal: “There’s a bad sector in the electromagnetic spectrum which is causing a rift in logical thinking,” opines another character. Nor is there any thought of mocking the viewing public, censors who would protect us from screen violence, or artists who profit from it. TVs don’t kill people, people kill people. A trio of Atlantans each handled one third of this uneven narrative marked with the titles “Transmission 1, 2 and 3.” Chicago writer-director-composer Tim Kinsella exacted greater dread, though fewer laughs, from his similar survivalist indie, the post-apocalyptic “Orchard Vale.” With Anessa Ramsey, Sahr, AJ Bowen, Matt Stanton, Ben Capstone, Justin Welborn and Cheri Christian. 99m. (Bill Stamets)
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