Introduction:
Because we are now in October I have decided to acknowledge the presence of
Halloween by giving my readers a bit of a treat. I don’t normally write much
about horror as a genre, mainly because I’ve focused primarily on television
and many of the series I watch don’t fall into that trope. However, since I
have expanded my scope of reviews in the last few years to movies and books I
think it’s worth looking at it a little more closely.
So in
the next month, I will focus slightly more on horror and its influences
throughout TV , where it may have influenced certain films I love and look at
some of my favorite novelists in the genre. (Conversely I may also look at some
who I think have no business writing, much less being successful at it.)
And I’m
going to start this series with a film I have wanted to write about for a very
long time and as you’ll see this is the time in more ways than one.
I have
made little secret over the years that I never liked The Blair Witch
Project. From the start I have never liked the found footage genre and the
fact that film has just deluged it with ever since it premiered has never thrilled
me, considering no matter how wretched the film is, the more of them we seem to
get. There’s also the fact, no matter how hard I try, I have never been able to
find anything frightening about the movie. I do get that it is all about
atmosphere and mood: it still seems to me like three whiny Gen X-ers who go
unprepared on a camping trip and get lost in the woods.
But the
main reason I am upset about it because when it came out in the summer of 1999
it was hailed for its originality and that these unknown filmmakers had made
such an extraordinarily frightening film on so little money. By that point I
knew better because the previous year I had seen a film that did everything Blair
Witch Project did but far better, did it on a budget that would have made
the makers of Blair Witch feel like they had Titanic money and
was in many ways more of a precursors for things I find far more admirable
about horror than anything I have ever seen before and rarely since.
I
remember the first time I saw The Last Broadcast – it was after midnight
not long on a summer night not long somewhere between by freshman and sophomore
year of college. It was on IFC, which at that point in its history was not
merely solely devoted to independent films but was still not showing them with
any commercials. At that point I was
still registered to getting to bed at a certain hour no matter what. It was
late at night and I was channel chasing before bed. I watched the first ten
minutes and kept watching.
I was
nowhere near the scholar of film or television that I have become (who is when
they are nineteen) but even then I had an instinct for when I was seeing
something interesting but not for the reasons most of watch movies. In fact, if
you have seen the film you know that for almost its entire running time you
think you are watching a documentary and then in the last ten minutes…
I don’t normally give spoiler warnings
especially for movies that have been around for decades. However since the film
in question is so obscure I doubt that all but the most devoted genre fans have
heard of it, I will tread lightly particularly when it comes to the ending. I’m
not even going to tell you who made the movie or who stars in it. And in fact,
if you are thinking of looking up the film on imdb.com or googling it, stop
right now. This film has appeal even if you know something about it, but
I’m not going to be the one to ruin for you. All right.
What I
will tell you is that not long after Blair Witch came out I would find
VHS copies of The Last Broadcast on sale trying to capitalize on the
very real fact that it been made and released a full year before Blair Witch
had been. I don’t blame the
filmmakers for doing so; not long after Roger Ebert gave the Blair Witch four
stars, one of his more diligent readers posted a letter asking him if he had
seen The Last Broadcast and pointed out this very fact. Ebert
acknowledged that he had not and as far I know, he never got around to it; I
never saw it in any of his film companions going forward.
I also
know that while Blair Witch become one of the greatest flashpoints in
pop culture history and regularly gets discussed among the greatest horror
films ever made, as far as I know no one ever mentions The Last Broadcast even
as an ancestor text. You can find Blair Witch playing on cable regularly
ever since it was released; I have not seen The Last Broadcast on cable
in nearly twenty years. (When I saw it was coming up on Cinemax, I recorded it
on VHS. I still have the tape.) And those who have seen The Last Broadcast think
very little of it: its imdb.com rating (again don’t look) is 5.2. I have little
doubt most of those people don’t like horror to begin with or think its
derivative of Blair Witch even though its clearly listed as having come
out the year before.
And the thing is, The Last Broadcast is
a far better film than every aspect of Blair Witch not the least in how
it worked. I’ll give you some of the outline of the plot but I’ll keep the
details spare. (The film is available on AMC+ streaming but again don’t look it
for just yet.)
The film
opens with a documentarian telling us that ‘he came to this project with the
same expectations as you about the Fact or Fiction murders.” This man known as
David speaks in a tone that is both a mix of portent and pretention, ending his
speech with: “As they said on Fact or Fiction, you decide.” The movie then
begins with a 911 call of a man named Jim Suerd reported that he was on a
project with some people and they’d disappeared. We then hear a radio call in
show, footage of the police reporting that there have several murders,
newspaper clippings, local reporters announcing a trial and the news that Jim
Suerd has been sentenced to life in prison. We get some more narration that is
a mix of portent and pretentious over some footage of trees, the film begins to
flicker and we see the title card THE LAST BROADCAST. Then we see footage of two men who call
themselves: “Johnny and Locus” who say they are broadcasting ‘Live from the
Pine Barrens from Fact or Fiction with a psychic and a paranormal sound
recorder.” “Johnny bungles this several times and the two of them speak with
excitement.
The
movie then takes on the idea of a documentary but while we see a fair amount of
stock footage unlike The Blair Witch the movie explains this that it is
from the filming of a New Jersey public access show called Fact or Fiction. The
film tells the story of the two ‘stars’ Steven Avkast and Locus Wheeler, who
are no different from so many other public access ‘stars’ – or in hindsight, much of what you’d see from
low budget cable or streaming.
We are
told the story of Jim Suerd who we learn was a user of the Internet (in the
1990s still considered a sign of being dangerous) and magic tricks. We’re told
his parents are dead and the only people who knew him were his landlady and a
childhood psychiatrist.
We learn
that Fact or Fiction quickly begins to diminish in ratings and economics and
that Steven comes up with the idea of using IRC (Internet Real Chat) as the
equivalent of fan mail. From it one night they get a suggestion, from a disturbing
electronic voice: ‘Why don’t you do a show about the Jersey Devil?”
Steven
then begins recruiting talent. One of them is a soap opera director, one of
them is a sound recorder named Rein, and one is a proposed psychic – Jim. We see Jim seem able to predict what cards
are coming up and an incident where the proposed date of the trip appears on
his arms. The filmmaker acknowledges
that these are little more than tricks.
We’re
then told of that on December 15, 1995 these four men went into the Pine
Barrens and that only Jim Suerd returned alive. We quickly learn that Locus and
Rein’s bodies are found stabbed and mutilated so badly that ‘they were torn
into 47 pieces.” Steven’s body was never found. Jim is quickly targeted as the
killer as they find a shirt with the blood of the victims of it in his
apartment.
Much of
this proceeds like the mix of a true crime documentary (the first time I saw The
Last Broadcast by this point I was trying to remember if I’d heard about
the killings on the news) Now the film switches into the found footage form.
Because this was a made for TV event, there is film footage of the entire trip
to the Pine Barrens. The DA wants a conviction and hires an editor (the
narrator says he was referred to as ‘The Killer Cutter’) to show what happen to
make Jim look guilty.
Much of
the next twenty minutes focuses on this footage. We see Jim leading the
filmmakers deeper and deeper into the woods, often with a blank look on his
face. The date of the trip appearing on his arm is used by the prosecutor as a
sign of premeditation. It shows the other people on the trip becoming puzzled
by Jim’s actions and at one point one of them makes a joke: “Are you a psychic
or a psycho?” Jim says: “Look man,” slams into the cameraman to the point where
the footage scrambles and walks off saying: “I’ll see you back at camp!”
The viewer
is not surprised to learn that the jury finds Jim guilty of murder and sentences
him to serve two consecutive life sentences. We then see Jim’s therapist saying
that the trial was ‘a kangaroo court’.
The documentarian discusses that while the blood evidence seems
overwhelming, in actuality there’s too little blood for the amount of violence
involved. He tells us that Jim had an alibi for the killings: he was on the Internet
all night and there are recordings of it. We see the prosecutor point out that
there is a forty minute gap between two communications and that leaves enough time
for him to do it.
All of
this has proceeded like the typical documentary. At the halfway mark of the
film, the story changes. Jim Suerd is found dead in his cell under unexplained circumstances.
A few days later, the filmmaker finds reels of exposed camera film on his
doorstep – “footage found later’ in other words. He considers going to the
authorities but rejects the idea until the film can be seen.
The rest
of the film I will not reveal because, if you have not seen it, you should be blindsided by it. What I will tell you is that The Last Broadcast
spends the next half hour concentrating on what the footage reveals. Revelations
are made that irrevocably demonstrate Jim is innocent and we see a blurry shot
that seems to tell us something horrifying but we can’t tell what it means. The
movie continues to make it seem like we are now trying to learn the truth but
continues to act entirely like it is true-crime or a mystery.
Then the
last ten minutes happen. When you see the movie I imagine, like many people who
watch horror films, you will argue that it rationally makes no sense. I would
remind viewers that the summer of 1999 gave us not only Blair Witch but The
6TH Sense a film where the ending was utterly blindsiding. The
revelation here is nearly as blindsiding, not so much from a plot concept but
from a genre one. There’s an argument that what we see in The Last Broadcast
lays the groundwork for Paranormal Activity, where the original committed
to the idea that it actually was found footage and had no credits.
I was
stunned by it at the time. I acknowledge that in retrospect, like twist endings
for so many future Shyamalan films, it’s utterly ludicrous. (Then again, I may
have more tolerance for this then some people: I still love Signs and people
have been mocking that movie for twenty years.) But I still admire it a quarter
of a century because in that time I’ve never seen any film willing to spend
that much time committing to the illusion it put up. And in a gesture of respect
that no filmmaker has ever put up before or since, the final credit of the film
acknowledges what it has done and tells the audience to keep it up for people
who haven’t seen it.
The Last
Broadcast is
clearly a labor of love because the filmmakers say that they had no money. That’s
literally one of the comments about it a book I read on the movie later. They
said they had a budget listing of $900 and even that was just a figure they made
up; everything for the film was made on borrowed equipment, grainy footage and
most of the interiors must have been neighbors willing to go along with it.
None of the cast was professionals and like most of the creators or Blair
Witch very few of them worked in the industry again (though it takes a lot
to say that this movie is part of an industry). At one point a person in the
film says about Steven: “No one ever makes it big in this kind of thing” and
there’s a very good chance he was speaking for everybody who was participating
in the movie. And indeed the film made a grand total of $12,097 world-wide. The
makers of The Last Broadcast must have truly gnashed their teeth when
they saw Blair Witch grossed over $100 million.
Even on
imdb.com the haters are still out there, saying that The Last Broadcast is
lame and you should seek out The Blair Witch Project for a real movie. Again, another reason to look it up on the
site. My advice to you the viewer: track the film down in some form. I’d argue
that you should break out your old school VCR, track down a VHS tape and watch
it that way. I have a feeling that The Last Broadcast is one of those
films that improves the worse the picture quality is. But if you don’t
want to be bothered with the effort, go to AMC+ and track it down. I have told
you why I love this movie and why I prefer it to Blair Witch but I won’t
make the decision for you. “As they said on Fact or Fiction, you decide.”
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