Nerds That Geek Movie Review: ‘Shortwave’

Written by Scott Edwards

​Life is an interesting journey, mainly because you never know what is waiting for you around the bend. When you continue to move forward, everything that is in your rear view has changed you into the person you are becoming. While some of us start to become complacent in where the road has taken us, others want to see what else it can offer. The road only comes to an end when we run out of gas and while some motors last longer than others, we do have a choice on what intersections we want to turn off on.
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Running late for a reading at the local library, Isabel is running with her daughter to get in before they miss too much. Leaving her daughter off with the person doing the reading, Isabel needs to use the bathroom, but upon leaving the bathroom she sees that everyone in the library is gone. In a frantic state and yelling for her daughter, she runs outside to see that the street is empty. Running down the street not knowing what could have happened, Isabel will need a life changing event to get her to accept that it was not her fault that her daughter was taken.

Months have passed, and Isabel and her husband Josh are moving into a new state of the art house being given to them by his company. With all of the technology in the world at their fingertips, it will be a difficult transition for the couple, but together, Josh believes that they can move forward. After saying goodbye to their friends Thomas and Jane who helped with the move, Isabel tries to be as nice as possible, but is still destroyed from the past. But there is something strange about this property as Isabel quickly finds out when she starts to hear a whisper coming from the woods out back. Thinking that it may only be something in her head, she keeps this development quiet from Josh who is trying to get her to open up and be the woman he fell in love with years ago.

Getting a call from Thomas that there is something new coming across at work, Josh needs to head into town to check it out and reluctantly, Isabel decides to join him for the ride. Walking a few steps out the front door however, she is stopped by an unseen force and Josh waits for her to wake up from the event. Not knowing what is happening to her, Isabel stays in the house and checks out one of the short-range radios that her husband has been working on. Turning it off and getting some personal time, the radio turns back on, and it plays a series of numbers that puts old memories of herself and her daughter front and center. When checking out the radio further, Isabel spots a crawl space under the house and decides to give it a quick look, but when she gets locked in she sees that she is not alone in the house, but that is just the beginning of her downward spiral, as whatever is in the house with the couple is looking for more than to just be noticed.

I was wondering what the heck the title meant as the movie started, because I think of shortwave radios as those things that truckers use, but this particular shortwave can pick up many more transmissions than just the usual. With Josh trying to pinpoint the point of origin of a signal from space with the use of these radios, he also finds a signal from the planet being sent back. Isabel is not privy to the second part of this but knows that there is something strange in the house with them and when she sees it firsthand, well, let’s just say that her life will never be the same again. This movie features a signal being researched for years, some alone time, memories of a past life, doubt, black figures, powerful beings and a smart house that can be forced to yield to you if you remember the alarm code. While there are some shots in the movie that really left me wondering what the point of those shots were (Fisheye Camera view), it really did not detract from the story, along with the actors who really left it all on the screen. Stay Scared.

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