James is a video archivist working for a local television station, still grieving the mysterious disappearance of his wife, Hannah, three years earlier. He buries himself in work, spending his nights digitizing old broadcast tapes.
One evening, while reviewing footage, he discovers a strange and disturbing broadcast signal intrusion, a pirate video interrupting regular programming. The clip shows a person wearing a distorted white rubber mask and speaking in a garbled, unintelligible voice. The eerie visuals creep him out, stirring something deep and uncomfortable inside him.
Curious and increasingly obsessed, he begins researching the origin of the intrusion. He discovers that similar broadcast intrusions occurred in late 1987 and early 1990s, all unsolved. Even more disturbing, these incidents seem to coincide with the disappearances of several women, one of whom bears a strong resemblance to Hannah. This connection deepens James's fixation, turning curiosity into a personal mission.
His investigation leads him to a range of eccentric and secretive figures, and he contacts a former FCC investigator named Dr. Stuart Lithgow. As James pieces together clues, he starts to believe that the videos were created by someone attempting to send a message or expose a sinister truth possibly about a group known as the Nite Pirates who were rumored to be behind some of the original intrusions. Dr. Lithgow dismisses the inquiry, saying the case had already been abandoned and was too difficult to solve. In the night, he meets Alice, a mysterious young woman with her own troubled past, who becomes a temporary companion in his search for answers. Together, they follow a trail of clues hidden within the footage, including Morse code, odd audio signals, and phone numbers embedded in the video.
As James digs deeper, his grip on reality begins to fray. He becomes paranoid, convinced he's being followed, and begins seeing hallucinations of masked figures from the tapes. Alice eventually disappears without a trace, leaving James further isolated. His quest becomes more dangerous as he tracks down the location believed to be the source of the third tape, a previously unknown intrusion video in an abandoned farmhouse.
Inside the farmhouse, Michael Gardiner appears to be mentally unstable and possibly connected to the broadcast intrusions. James, now fully consumed by his obsession, plans to rebuild the hijack setting that Michael used during his crime. Restraining him, Michael forces him to reenact the original broadcast hijacked setting, dressing him in the same mask that he used from the victims and demanding a confession. Whether Michael is truly guilty remains ambiguous, but James kills him, convinced that he has found the person responsible for both the videos and perhaps his wife's disappearance.
On the drive back to the city, James begins to hallucinate more intensely. He sees and hears broadcast interference in his car's radio, but suddenly, he hits something on the road—a young woman standing in the dark—and he investigates, her face appearing artificial, almost robotic, with black liquid oozing from her mouth.
