The Last Broadcast (1998)

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1. 

   CinemaDump

   Synopsis
   
   David Leigh (David Beard) narrates this documentary outlining the mysterious occurrences surrounding a trip into the New Jersey Pine Barrens to attempt the find the Jersey Devil which is some kind of local legend. Steven "Johnny" Avkast (Stefan Avalos) and Locus Wheeler (Lance Weiler) are the hosts of a paranormal variety show that is failing. To drum up some interest, they decide to do a live broadcast/live radio broadcast/live webcast of their trek into the Pine Barrens, but something goes wrong. Only one of their crew members ever comes back.
   
   Review
   
   The Last Broadcast looks like it's extremely low budget and it is. Although the $900 is only an estimate for the budget, that's peanuts. Not even, it's a peanut. But that's exactly how TLB should look. The show that Avkast and Wheeler host looks like an awful piece of crap and that's what drives their small and dying popularity anyway. What the low budgetness of this whole production does is add to the creepiness factor and that's what The Last Broadcast excels at. It's technical shortcomings are what make it creepy.
   
   This is not a jump out of your seat kind of scary movie. It is however quite eerie a lot of the time. The age of The Last Broadcast shows because of the use of old technology like dial-up internet, old video equipment and of course the lack of cell phones. IRC chat is used pretty prominently too and all this old stuff just feels creepy to me. Video and sound cuts are commonplace and you're always afraid of what you might see or might hear. It's like there's something about all this old tech that hides some kind of unseen malice.
   
   The film is made to be like some sort of documentary with narration as I said. Whether or not this is the most effective way to drive the story forward, David Beard gives a sometimes cheesy, sometimes creepy delivery of his lines. He drives the story forward and you'll see for yourself that he's necessary for the story that Stefan Avalos and Lance Weiler want to tell. Without spoiling the ending, I'll just say that it's a complete disappointment almost ruins the movie completely.

   It's also a huge mystery to me why Avalos and Weiler throw out the found footage film style for these remaining five minutes or so when the climax makes its appearance. Pretty much everything that makes The Last Broadcast creepy is thrown out the window.

   
   
   The ending is what derails The Last Broadcast and it's a shame. It's a pretty weird piece of found footage that oozes creepiness through its old-tech pores. It's good fun to watch some of the second rate acting, especially from Jim Seward but some of that bad acting makes sense because the characters are part of a dumb TV show anyway. You'll sleep fine after seeing The Last Broadcast but it's all the same an interesting experiment if you're willing to try and ignore the ending.
   
   Rating
   
   5.5/10 9 years 7 months ago
2. 

   DJPowWow

   A pretty entertaining "found footage/mockumentary" thriller that pre-dates the more well-known "Blair Witch Project" by almost a year. It was made pretty early in the advent of digital filmmaking, so much of it has a sort of home-made look (which makes a bit of sense for some of the in-film Cable Access TV bits). The only real criticism I have is toward the end, where the style makes a sudden shift away from the documentary POV-style camera-work into the more standard 3rd person camera, which is more than a bit jarring. 11 years 5 months ago

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