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11 out of 12 people found the following comment useful :-
I shall return, interfrastically., 2 November 2002

Author: neale_graham

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Contains spoilers

Since the release of The Blair Witch Project in 1999, a less well-known shaky camera effort released the year before has had to endure countless comparisons with its more famous counterpart. One day perhaps reviews of The Last Broadcast will not make such a lazy comparison, but clearly that time has yet to arrive. On the surface, they are similar: an eclectic group of people go into secluded woodland and end up in peril with only a video montage left of their final few days. But whereas The Blair Witch Project provides you solely with the footage of the gang's descent into jeopardy, The Last Broadcast comes at the event from a different angle, that of retrospective and revisionist documentary.

First off, it has to be said that the events are totally fallacious. While to some this is blindingly obvious, I had gone into the film without this knowledge and had naively assumed that what I was watching was factual. I had no reason to doubt that what I was being told was true, given that I had never heard of the ‘Fact or Fiction' murders of some seven years ago and that the style of the film seemed thoroughly convincing. Certainly the message at the outset about the cast not being actors had me fooled. So with that in mind, perhaps my review of the film will be slightly more generous than those filmgoers who took being duped rather badly.

The ostensible filmmaker David Leigh sets the scene, describing the murders of two cable TV show hosts, Steven Avkast and Locus Wheeler, plus production aide Rein Clackin. The only apparent suspect is Jim Suerd, a weirdo loner and computer geek who was recruited by the TV hosts as their guide into the paranormal for a live tele/web cast from the Pine Barrens of New Jersey. In a bid to arrest flagging viewing figures, the quartet head into the icy woodlands on the hunt for the legendary Jersey Devil to film the show. Suerd leads the way, taking the group three miles from the nearest access road. This homevideo footage is interlaced with a talking head documentary style as Leigh quizzes those who knew Suerd and those involved in the investigation into the case.

Things start going awry when Suerd reacts badly to a wisecrack from Clackin which is caught on camera and replayed throughout the film. It forms the basis for the prosecution's video evidence of a man capable of committing the homicides. When blood is found on his shirt and given the remote location, there are no other viable suspects. Suerd is handed two life terms but shortly after sentencing, he dies in prison in `mysterious circumstances' leaving the filmmaker without a crucial piece in the jigsaw. Nevertheless, Leigh, as narrator, sets about sowing seeds of doubt in the viewers mind as to Suerd's guilt in a thoroughly convincing manner. The evidence he puts forward suggests that what looked an open and shut case may not necessarily be so. But the turning point is the unexplained delivery of a box of videotape footage of the night the murders took place not seen by the jury. Now, having had much of the tape digitally restored, Leigh has crucial evidence that seems to suggest that the killer almost certainly was not Suerd. As the film progresses, the film restorer says that one frame could reveal the face of the guilty, proving once and for all the guilt or innocence of Suerd. It takes until five minutes from the end for the tape to be enhanced sufficiently to identify the murder. Needless to say, it's both shocking and wholly unexpected.

The Last Broadcast cost a reported $900 to make. If that is the case, the filmmakers deserve fulsome praise. This is a clever, interesting and well-executed idea that convinces as both a horror flick and serious case study into a flawed criminal investigation. Bearing in mind that (perhaps foolishly) I had no idea of its dubious authenticity, I was totally engrossed as the story twisted and turned down paths I never expected it to go. It was a far more convincing proposition than The Blair Witch Project (which cost $22,000 to make) and to my mind a whole lot more frightening too. Perhaps this was because I knew the Blair Witch was a hoax when I watched it but believed the Fact or Fiction murders to be genuine. Regardless, it remains a creepy proposition. There are plot holes certainly. For instance, how did blood from all three that led the police to assume Suerd's guilt get onto his shirt if he was not the killer? And how was he online all night on his run-of-the-mill laptop out in the middle of the woods given that `the Innernet' (as the Americans love to pronounce it) was a relatively new phenomenon when the film was set? Some things just didn't add up in retrospect but it would be churlish to pick apart the film just for the sake of it. The acting on the whole was good (well they had this gullible viewer fooled anyway) and the film, while in no way of studio release quality, looked like it had a budget considerably higher than just under a grand. The twist at the end of the film surely ranks up with The Usual Suspects and Fight Club in the `I didn't see that one coming' stakes. Some have criticised the ending for letting the film down. I disagree but, as ever, it's a subjective thing. Make your own mind up.

What we're dealing with here is a complete lack of respect for convention. Not only was it exceptionally low budget, it was also the first film in US motion picture history to be released without having used any celluloid. It had been edited on a home computer and dispatched by satellite. Had I seen this film before The Blair Witch Project I would have been even more impressed with its unique approach. As it stands, the two films should stand apart from a horror genre that has been treading water for so long it must be in danger of drowning. Rather than bangs, gore and all-too-predictable panto-style shocks, the film creates its own eerie atmosphere and scary believability by relying on the environment and the actors to create a sense of unease and impending doom. It offers a new perspective and new techniques in going about putting the fear of God into you. And for that reason alone it comes highly recommended.

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17 out of 26 people found the following comment useful :-
I Still Know What "The Blair Witch" Did to "The Last Broadcast" This Summer..., 6 August 1999

Author: Tony Rowland (rogueplanet@webtv.net) from Vancouver, Washington

"Star Wars" had "Battlestar Galactica".

"The Abyss" had "Leviathan" and "Deep Star Six".

"Babylon 5" had "Deep Space Nine."

"Last Broadcast" has "Blair Witch."

All the above were films or TV shows with original ideas that were used and/or usurped by other studios. Some of the spin-off ripoffs were better, some were not.

"Blair Witch" fans defend their film, made and released nearly a full year after "Broadcast", by saying that their film is only identical on a surface level...teens travel into the woods to make a documentary and are killed. The truth runs much deeper.

Both films used video instead of film, both films used a pseudo-documentary format, both showed what happened to the characters using footage they shot to tell the story, both leave the audience wondering just exactly what happened. The main difference is that "Broadcast" told you the story from a different perspective...the point of view of a documentary filmmaker involved with the killings. "Broadcast" is, in this respect, much more intelligent than "Blair Witch". "Blair Witch" is more frightening, more eerie, where "Broadcast" doesn't get really creepy until the end, where you realize where the story has taken you. You have been led down the garden path, past the lies that pass as truth, and face-first into the face of darkness. "Blair Witch" is more personal, first-person driven rather than detached. This is more impressive, but it is also louder and more obvious.

I enjoyed both films, but I respected "Broadcast" more. It did it first, it did it well. "Blair Witch" will make more money off the backs of the filmgoers who were fooled by the hype, but "Broadcast" will love on as it's predecessor. Don't go into "Broadcast" expecting a scarier movie, just a more intelligent one.

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18 out of 28 people found the following comment useful :-
Psychic or Psycho?, 14 January 2001

Author: pizowell

You may see The Last Broadcast on the video store shelf and just say its another knock off of The Blair Witch Project. Well actually The Last Broadcast came out before BW. It chronicles a group of independent film makers making a documentary on the Jersey Devil. There are many similarities to BW in The Last Broadcast which would lead one to believe that The BW film makers watched The Last Broadcast and ripped it off.

Blair Witch Project is much better than Last Broadcast, but The Last Broadcast is just as suspenceful in my opinion. Most of it was filmed with a hand held video camera on a shoe string budget like BW, but isn't half way as popular. The Last Broadcast is a little redundant and kind of long winded toward the end, but it is very easy to lose yourself in the movie until the disappointing finale. It doesn't look into the legend of the Jersey Devil or exactly explain what it is, unlike the Blair Witch. She even had a special on the Sci-Fi Channel about her. The film makers all acted in the film and cast their friends in lead roles. The acting is nothing to write home to mommy about, but the character of Jim Seurd is worth the price of admission alone. I had a wonderful time watching The Last Broadcast and wish more people would check out the movie that The Blair Witch Project ripped off. 8/10

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12 out of 18 people found the following comment useful :-
A Good Film, 8 November 2001

Author: Mike Z-2 (zaleskim2@scranton.edu) from Scranton/Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Written for my high school newspaper my senior year.

A few years ago, Lance Weller and Stefan Avalos were sitting around and from their ennui came the idea that they make an inexpensive movie. They had less than a thousand dollars to spend, but they also had advanced digital camera equipment that was sufficient for their film. Eventually the product developed from that idea was an independent, documentary-style horror film with plenty of home-video shots of camp-sites, and people running around the woods at night. Does that sound familiar? It should.

While The Last Broadcast was made before the much more famous Blair Witch Project, the difference in their success was the distribution. When distributors approached Avalos and Weller asking for permission to distribute their film, the directors rejected the offers because they wanted to change the movie (either by removing parts of it or changing the title). Instead they opted to distribute it themselves and now it has been all over the world, winning many awards along the way, and even gaining the recognition of being both the first full-length film to be digitally broadcast in a movie theater and over the internet. It had a one week run at the International House in Philadelphia when it was first released, right before it went to Belgium and the Cannes Film Festival among other places.

In terms of whether or not the makers of The Blair Witch Project stole their idea, it is known that those directors did see The Last Broadcast in Florida over a year ago. Avalos and Weller, whom I had the chance to speak with when I saw the movie during its special run in Doylestown recently, said they have gotten many calls from lawyers encouraging them to sue but "are working on current projects and in general have better things to do." They were very down-to-earth, and even showed my friend and me the projection room where the small digital projector, which resembled your typical CPU and contained the movie on its hard drive, stood next to the giant movie reels used to show regular films.

The basic plot of The Last Broadcast involves four men (two of whom are Avalos and Weller), from a cable access television show called Fact or Fiction, going into the Pine Barrens of New Jersey hoping to catch a glimpse of the infamous Jersey Devil on camera. One of the men gets out of the forest alive, a very eccentric recluse who went on the trip because he claimed to know the whereabouts of the Jersey Devil, and of course he is accused of murdering the other three. The whole film is told in a compelling documentary style that presents the facts of the case, the police investigation into the murders, Suerd's trial, and the documentarian's (David Beard) view of who really committed the murders. All of the interviews and "factual" information are interwoven with "actual" footage that was taken by the four members of the crew before their brutal murders, and all of it flows together seamlessly until the disturbing and astonishing conclusion. Throughout the movie, the familiar Pine Barrens provide a grim backdrop.

As opposed to the very simplistic Blair Witch Project, The Last Broadcast is a very complex jigsaw puzzle with finely drawn characters, an excellent and wholly believable mystery, and an equally shocking, if not more satisfying, conclusion. Broadcast is also provocative in that it serves as a mind-opening commentary on the news media's manipulation of the facts (usually to create an agreed upon truth for the public to accept) as well as the ludicrousness of the tabloid media.

Destined for cult status with its nine hundred dollar budget, The Last Broadcast is excellent, and certainly one of the most original and well structured films I've seen. Before Thanksgiving the film will be on VHS and DVD at video stores, and it will be shown on HBO several times in the coming months.

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13 out of 20 people found the following comment useful :-
Interesting Idea but Failed Execution, 11 January 2005

Author: Brandt Sponseller from New York City

The Last Broadcast is presented as if it's a "documentary" about the murder of two hosts and a hired hand for a cable access show named Fact or Fiction. In the scenario, Fact or Fiction was in New Jersey's Pine Barrens to present a live show on the Jersey Devil. A second hired hand is convicted of the murders (this isn't a spoiler because it's stated at the beginning of the film). The film also makes an attempt to become more philosophical towards the end, and there is an unexpected twist.

For me, this film failed on most levels, although there were a few small things that worked. The Last Broadcast is often compared to The Blair Witch Project, which arrived a year later. The comparison is appropriate, and it's difficult to imagine that The Blair Witch Project writer/directors didn't lift the basic idea from The Last Broadcast. The Blair Witch Project didn't work for me, either, although in my view, it works better than The Last Broadcast does. Both films rest on a similar gimmick of claiming to be partially a composed "documentary" and partially a collection of videotaped images by a group of young adults who are about to get killed in the woods, and we're watching them as "evidence" of what happened to them. Both have ambiguity whether something supernatural happened, as the characters were exploring a legend about a supernatural being, or whether more mundane homicides occurred. There are finer-grained similarities as well, but I mainly bring it up to give you an idea of what The Last Broadcast is like if you haven't seen it but you've seen The Blair Witch Project.

The first problem with The Last Broadcast is that it doesn't play like a documentary. I've seen many documentaries. I've never seen one that looked like The Last Broadcast. Rather, this film looks like how an amateur filmmaker who has never seen a documentary might imagine documentaries, armed only with a description of the genre. That's a big problem, because the film hinges on playing like a documentary. In a similar vein, there is a problem with the Fact or Fiction program, and the actors playing the hosts. Even though Fact or Fiction is supposed to only be a cable access show, the material is done poorly and the actors are unconvincing. Again, it looks more like an amateur filmmaker who has never seen cable access programming imagining what it would be like based on a description only.

Like The Blair Witch Project, another big problem with The Last Broadcast is that for some strange reason directors Stefan Avalos and Lance Weiler decided to use purposefully bad camera-work for much of the material, especially any footage shot by the Fact or Fiction guys, and footage by the documentary host, David Beard. While the idea to use purposefully bad camera-work isn't flawed, the execution is flawed, because the camera-work is so ridiculous that it again comes across like an amateur filmmaker imagining what bad camera-work might be like. Characters inexplicably will not keep the camera still (a really annoying scene showing this is when David Beard is filming himself in the woods towards the end and keeps revolving). They inexplicably have extreme close-ups of mouths, eyes, etc. If the idea is to make the documentary and the cable access show seem real, such exaggerated bad camera-work just does not work.

Another problem is that the documentary keeps repeating material. Most of the videotaped evidence is repeated many times. The 911 phone call is repeated. The narrator keeps repeating the same ideas over and over. It all plays like an attempt to pad out the film's running time. Also, the narrator has a very annoying monotone, which comprises the bulk of the dialogue throughout the film. It is another aspect that does not help sell the film as a documentary.

Finally, the attempt at becoming more philosophical about media's influence on reality perception is very sophomoric, and the big "twist" at the end was fairly inexplicable to me. There were a couple other small points throughout the film that were confusing to me, as well, such as why the soap opera director wasn't involved with the Pine Barrens shoot, but my attention might have drifted a couple times. I was also confused how Fact or Fiction, which was otherwise so technically bare bones and incompetent, was able to manage an audio/video as well as an Internet satellite feed miles into the woods in 1995.

On the plus side, the premise has promise--the story is interesting, and there are some nice shots of the woods accompanied by atmospheric music. Perhaps if the film were handled more conventionally, The Last Broadcast may have been moderately successful. Even though the twist made little sense to me, the style of the film at that point, which pulled further away from the feigned documentary, worked better for me.

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5 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
Chock-Full of Spoilers--Beware!, 2 February 2003
Author: foxgirl from USA

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

To begin, let me say that I am not a great fan of The Blair Witch Project. I was, however, impressed by the hype surrounding the supposedly novel and revolutionary execution of that film, and had long been under the surface impression that no movie had before attempted something like that. Granted, there are aspects to BWP's production and post-production that may indeed be revolutionary, but the DVD case to The Last Broadcast isn't lying when it claims credit for BWP's inspiration.

**MAJOR SPOILER ALERT**

The cinematography on this film was on the whole far less annoying than that of BWP, but this is set up as a sort of twisted documentary after the fact. There's some photo-manipulated (watch the behind-the-scenes vignettes!) gore and a graphic asphyxiation scene, but apart from that? It's an old-fashioned spooky little tale of suspense and murder that leaves a lot of questions even after the disturbing last ten minutes.

I can see how some other reviewers came upon this halfway through and presumed it to be an actual documentary. I have seen dozens of shows like this on The Learning Channel, for example, and the execution in this case is excellently faithful. Far from stiff or unnatural, I thought the interviewees were as candid and believable as any I have seen on real documentaries, and their lack of poise only added to that impression. Instead of being an endless pastiche of jumpy video of whiny, scared, lost people, which is, to me, BWP in a nutshell, The Last Broadcast was as much like a cable crime documentary as it could have been, and the fact that film-style plugins were unavailable to its creators earns my admiration... the film-style sequences (particularly the ending) were impeccably hand-altered.

I consulted a number of reviews here on IMDb before watching the film, even if I had rented it on a whim, never having heard of it before. Without reading any spoilers, I got the distinct impression that even many fans of The Last Broadcast quite disliked the novel twist at the end. The fact that the documentary host was actually a calculating murderer was absolutely beautiful. It was a truly Holmesian twist, making the last ten minutes of the movie horrifyingly absorbing. I could not look away--and trust me, the asphyxiation scene certainly made me want to. As the distorted image of the murderer's face began to come into focus via the video restoration, I will admit that I had some inkling as to what the final twist would in fact be. When I saw the caption regarding the agreement between the video restorationist and the documentary maker to contact the authorities AFTER the face had been triumphantly revealed, I was sure. But even seeing things fall into place, I could not help but see them through to the end. In the last few minutes, the movie grabs you, takes your breath away, flees with you deep into the Pine Barrens, and leaves you there, to wonder.

How did Suard die? Why did the documentarian elaborately hoax the delivery of the mangled video? If he didn't, who sent it? If he did, was his own megalomania enough to hire the unfortunate video restorationist? What happened to the body of Avkast? If that body was so well-hidden, why did the murderer fail to at all disguise the location of the other two? Won't any of the interviewees question that the documentary never comes to light? The whole elaborate media-driven point of the documentary itself evaporates when you realize the documentary cannot possibly be shown because of the atrocious murder that occurs at its end. What, then, is the documentarian's eventual fate? I actually half-expected suicide deep within the Barrens, but then where is the triumph of getting away with this inexplicable series of ritualistic murders? I wish we had seen a true motive. For the documentarian to have slain all of them would have required him to either follow the party into the woods or have been in league with Suard, both of which seem weirdly motivated and difficult. Certainly in being sentenced to life imprisonment, Suard would have brought to light a collaborator. If there was no collaboration, was it just simple fury at the crappiness of the Fact or Fiction cable show on the part of the documentarian? ;)

The world may never know. Despite all the questions, all the untied loose ends, the performance of, in particular, the documentarian is truly beautiful. But no one in this does a poor job. This low-budget group of filmmakers and actors is to be commended for what I had previously thought to be the unique vision of the BWP people. It's worth seeing, as long as you are not expecting a creature feature.

I beg to disagree with those who say there is a disappointing lack of monster in the story, however. I think the asphyxiation scene clearly shows a great deal of truly monstrous and inhuman conduct, more than enough to be chilling, even terrifying. And knowing that there are six billion creatures on the surface of the planet that could have that capacity is more than enough fright for me, thanks... much scarier than the demon that supposedly haunts the New Jersey Pine Barrens.

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Odd & creepy, 9 December 2005

Author: TheatreX from Louisville, KY

This film, made some time before Blair Witch Project, either heavily influenced that film or else they just came up with the idea independently....ha. Two hosts of a cable access TV show go to the New Jersey Pine Barrens to search for the "Jersey Devil" and end up dead, along with their sound man. The only survivor also became the only suspect, although the body of one host was never found. The suspect died mysteriously in jail & a box of film arrived at the door of the documentary maker, and a woman sets about reconstructing the film to see if she can find who the killer is. This is well done and strangely creepy, and if you know anything about this and Blair Witch they're very similar in style. Who cares which one came first, etc., they're both great & worth seeing. Unike Blair Witch though, this has a better explanation of whom the perpetrator is and a surprise ending, and they go hand in hand here. I think both films do a lot for capturing 'implied' horror, as in, there's SOMETHING out there & it may be on film or it may not be but nobody's around to talk about it anymore so the viewer has to puzzle it over. Most excellent, 8 out of 10.

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4 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
a somewhat effective illustration of the manipulation of truth by media, 14 December 2004

Author: ThrownMuse from The land of the Bunyips

A group of guys went into the woods to film an episode of their cable access show "Fact or Fiction?" They bring along a supposed psychic to help them with their mission: to find out if the Jersey Devil really exists. Two of them were found brutally murdered, and one was never found. The lone survivor is the psychic, and the murders get pinned on him. Our narrator, however, believes that something else happened that night, and sets out on his own mission by putting together this documentary using the men's recorded footage. Obviously, this sounds a lot like "The Blair Witch Project," but really the only thing the two films have in common is the basic premise: local legends and disappearances in the woods. The makers of BWP may have taken the concept of this movie to create their effectively scary psychological horror film. The Last Broadcast itself is not much of a horror film. If anything, it is a document that illustrates how blurry the line between fact and fiction can be, especially when media is involved. It could have been better, but all in all this is a very respectable effort for an extremely low budget film. My Rating: 6/10

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1 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
DONT lie on a cold living room floor with the headphones from the TV on while watching this!, 1 November 2000
Author: Bungle-9 from Northern Ireland

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

I haven't seen Blair Witch, and this film makes me wonder if there's any point. This film is totally engrossing from the outset. There is a real substance in the background to the story and the characters, and you can really see the character development in the film. The photos of the dead guys were really chilling, right to the bone. It's really tense watching the recovered footage of the night in the woods, its really scary, realistic and atmospheric. Had this not been introduced as a movie, the audience would really have thought that it was real. Except, of course, for the ending scene, which really isn't part of the 'documentary'. The mega-twist in this scene is so unpredictable, you will find yourself going over the whole movie again in your head and go "Ohhhhhh yeah! Now I see!". This is some scary s**t. Watch the end credits too, look out for the ending note. One question still puzzles me though (possible spoiler, I don't know). How did the blood from the other three guys get on Jim's shirt in the first place?

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2 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
Good plot for low budget., 29 December 2004

Author: richbrutus from Netherlands

Jim Suerd is convicted for murdering a film crew he lead into the deep forests of New Jersey to find the so-called Jersey Devil. Is Suerd the Jersey Devil? That question we can't answer right away, because Suerd is dead already in the beginning of this movie. Therefor David Leigh, a documentary maker, is going to investigate.

Soon after this movie started, I really didn't think I was going to finish it. Luckily it didn't take me too long to understand that I was supposed to watch this movie keeping in mind this was really a puzzle. Nothing more than a big riddle, riddling along for 86 minutes. The slow speaking monotone voice of the narrator guiding you through and providing solutions for those that stayed behind. Not a movie for normal consumption, but one to really pay attention to and when done so, even rewarding.

Although I liked the plot of this movie, I was really disappointed in the makers of it wanting the viewers to believe that all a 1995 high tech film lab uses to edit videos were a pair of scissors and some glue. Come on guys!

I recommend this movie to everyone who likes happy endings.

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