"Relay is not the kind of film we see much of anymore, and it's all the better for it. It's a love letter to analog, heavily featuring record players, phone calls, and snail mail - but it's not just paying lip service. It builds its central conceit on the shoulders of the '70s thrillers that thrive in paranoia, and uses a piece of bygone tech to enhance its narrative."
"The film derives its name from the Telecommunications Relay Service, a publicly-funded program that relays messages from deaf callers. Ash uses a teletypewriter, or telecommunications device for the deaf (TDD), to transmit anonymous, untraceable messages between his clients and their former employers. That makes him a ghost in the machine, accessing technology that director David Mackenzie likens to another world."
Relay centers on Ash, a mysterious fixer who brokers deals between would-be corporate whistleblowers and the conglomerates they could expose. Ash offers whistleblowers a way to buy their silence and return intel to former employers through analog infrastructure. The film foregrounds record players, phone calls, snail mail and a teletypewriter (TDD) tied to the Telecommunications Relay Service as untraceable communication tools. The aesthetic leans on '70s paranoia thrillers, using obsolete technology to create a ghost-in-the-machine atmosphere. Director David Mackenzie frames the technology as almost another world and filmed scenes around existing public booths at Penn Station.
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