The Last Broadcast.

Review #2624: The Last Broadcast.

Cast: 

David Beard (David Leigh), James Seward (James "Jim" L. Suerd), Stefan Avalos (Steven "Johnny" Avkast), Lance Weiler (Locus Wheeler), Rein Clabbers (Rein Clackin), Michele Pulaski (Michelle "Shelly" Monarch), Tom Brunt (Thomas "Tom" Branski), Mark Rublee (Clair Deforest), A.D. Roso (Detective Anthony Rosi), Dale Worstall (Dr. Dale Orstall), Vann K. Weller (forensic pathologist), Sam Wells (Sam Woods), Jay MacDonald (web designer), Faith Weiler (Joyce Dryer), and Marianne Connor (Mary Brenner) Produced, Written, and Directed by Stefan Avalos and Lance Weiler.

Review: 

"In The Last Broadcast, we play with the idea of the information age. We play with the way public opinion works. The media shows one side of an event and people are very quick to believe. The whole point is aiming something at somebody and saying,‘This is truth'." - Stefan Avalos

"Nothing’s admissible as evidence anymore. The moment you put a cut in or distort any semblance of

time, the truth is gone." - Lance Weiler

This is yet again another movie that I had vaguely heard of as a teenager because of a YouTube video*. And that included even before seeing The Blair Witch Project [1999] (in all of its disappointing glory). The Last Broadcast, just like The Blair Witch Project, had its own interesting road from low-budget filmmaking to online phenomenon.  Stefan Avalos decided he wanted to be a filmmaker by high school rather than stay on as a trained violinist. Avalos met Weiler when the former was a lab assistant and the latter was a student at Bucks County Community College. Each rose up in the world of getting to do film and most importantly, video. The thing that was cited in making it possible, apparently, to do stuff with video came with cheap video digitizers for computers and digital camcorders that people could buy (for a considerable price, anyway). For the film, various formats were used in filming ranging from 8/16mm film to VHS to even Tyco cameras. The budget was recorded as being $900 (not counting costs for shooting, post, or borrowed equipment); as it was done on video, it started with regional releases in March 1998 before it rose to a few more cities in October, as done through satellite streaming. Since the release of the film, Weiler has been involved in a variety of ventures, ranging from an indie thriller/alternate reality game in Head Trauma in the 2000s, digital fiction and so on. Avalos has also stayed involved in film, even directing a shot-on-video thriller The Ghosts of Edendale [2003] and the violin-focused documentary Strad Style [2017]. 

So, what's the movie about? Well, it delves into the "investigation" of the deaths of a couple of public-access television hosts (as played by Avalos and Weiler) and their sound man (Clackin) along with the accused man (Seward) that had been with them at the time of their travels into the Pine Barrens in New Jersey to look for, wait for it, the Jersey Devil. For 1998, there's also the moments spent with the "Internet Relay Chat", because the plan was to do a live show (TV, radio *and* the Internet). Beard plays the filmmaker exploring the matter, for which things get weird. I tried to give this one a shot, really. Honestly, there was a part of me that wanted to believe that this would rise above the level of The Blair Witch Project (even if out of spite). And then, well, nope. 86 minutes of meandering around, narrating over select footage that tries to play completely serious as if one stumbled onto an impression of Dateline before eventually reaching a twist ending that comes completely out of nowhere for the sake of having a twist. It just drones on and on and on and on, and you have to wonder if it actually would've been better if it had actually just focused on the two doomed hosts rather than just getting nips and tucks of "the surviving footage". There is no person to be invested in because goddamnit, Beard is just not the type of guy to want to see talk the same points. The monster is the thought in your head to actually sit down and watch it. I can't imagine that true-crime stuff is this repetitive.  You have a group of desperate people wanting to believe that a couple of things they heard/saw on the Internet is enough to maybe make a show that see it all go to hell...and all you get is the most mundane stuff to come through. You get the gamut of info about "the accused" though, from the landlady to the child psychologist because hey, did you know he claimed to have psychic powers? Or that maybe he's innocent (but he's dead anyway). Well, you sure will get to hear about it over and over, so have fun. Does the audience question what they see, ending included? No, not really, it just comes off as a lazy cheat fit for a student film, not one trying to actually play off of "reality". As a whole, The Last Broadcast is an accomplishment for cheap filmmaking and the bare minimum of telling something different in the video format and little else when it comes to horror.

Overall, I give it 5 out of 10 stars.

Next up: Critters.

*You guessed it, Cinemassacre's Monster Madness (1:05:24) - Monster Madness History of Horror (2007)

As for the idea of, well, who came first, Blair Witch Project (apparently conceived earlier than its 1999 release date) or The Last Broadcast. Both involved a documentary crew going out to a place with trees and mystery around it all that leads to danger. That's basically really the only similarity, because at least Blair Witch gives you "people" to follow with. It feels so good to close the circle of "found footage horror in a forest" that I inadvertently started for myself back on the original Halloween: The Week After with The Blair Witch Project on November 5, 2019, while 2021 saw me do Blair Witch and 2024 saw me do Blair Witch 2. Of course, I hear there may be a new Blair Witch movie in 2027, so maybe, just maybe, *one* of these found footage forest movies will be a good one.

*other various notes - Hollywood Effects on an Indie Budget - MovieMaker Magazine