The Ending


So I was totally shocked at the ending of this flick.
What was up with the guy coming to get this poor chick and suffocating her with plastic? I knew how they filmed it to make it look realistic. The different camera angles gave it away.
I kinda get unnerved when I see violent deaths like these. Either I find them very interesting or they move me or I feel very sick that I could make better murder scenes.

reply

the way i see it is there was no documentary, the guy was just making the video as an homage to imself, cause he was insane.

reply

ah geez.. Don't take it so literally. The ending was a joke, it was a big screaming "GOTCHA! We really hadya goin didn't we?"
Personally I thought it was a pretty lame giveaway, I'd much rather have had it left to a darker ending so my imagination could run with it and hell I might even of looked online to see if there really was such a cable show, but nah they wanted people to know in the finale that it was all madeup. It's funny though.
The fact that some people want to go on thinking its meant to be taken seriously are like all those people out there that think the Blair Witch project was real or based on something real.

reply

[deleted]

Ok. It was a good movie with a corney ending. But what did he kill them with? They said the people were obliterated. & couldn't even put up a fight.

reply

[deleted]

I agree .... The movie was building to something good, with a lot of great detail, until the last part, which was so disappointing that I became angry.

If you're going for something, go for it, don't rip off the viewer by doing camera long shots filmed by a third party cameraman in 16mm when you're supposed to be alone in the wilderness or killing someone alone with a DV - It just tanked....

It would've been creepier if, when he was doing the first recreation trip with the hand-held DV, as he was talking about the site being a close approximation to the base camp, you see some blurry movement in the background, then a struggle and muted scream, the camera being dropped a la Blair Witch.....then CUT TO the recreation girl (on self-filmed DV), finding Steve's face on the film (or seeing him cutting himself for the blood).

This could have been scarier than Blair Witch (which I didn't find scary at all) if they spent a little more time on the script.

reply

I couldn't tell if it was Steve or if it was the filmmaker-David? I just watched it today with my dad and I thought the ending was quite well executed. . .But I was just slightly confused

reply

[deleted]

mrpher points out the exact problem I had with this moderately engaging movie. The transition from "documentary movie" to "movie movie" might have worked in much, much more competent hands . And it would have helped if they'd offered a motive for the guy killing the Fact or Fiction guys and Michelle.

reply

i enjoyed the film until you saw the filmmaker's face. that is where the film should have ended, or something else for an ending should have been thought of. that is the point where it goes from mockumentary to movie with 3rd person camera POV. didn't like that part. the rest was pretty creepy, though.

"Ah, ya's fancy pants, alla ya's"
"Leave the gun. Take the cannoli."

reply

Damn, I watched it yesterday night, proper late, and with lights out..
Was actually quite a frightening, well thought out movie, but I agree 100% I was pretty damn disappointed with the end..it was terrible.
It was all seeming so eerie and great for a low budget movie, sorta like a horrific Unsolved Mysteries episode...and nearer the end I was getting creeped out and tense, and I was also looking forward to a real stand-out scary ending, but sadly when it cut to him getting out of the car and walking in and randomly killing her, it was disappointing and completely surprising!
I mean, I just wish they'd done something to leave it, with a really weird face or something else, I wish he wasn't the murderer, ya know, I mean it was about the Jersey Devil...they should have left it with a creepy face or something really spooky like a psycho in the woods..I dunno they could have changed some bits to change the ending =/

reply

I don't agree that the ending was terrible or that it was just a 'gotcha' (though it also functioned in that way).

The ending made the film what it was, which is perhaps something different from what a lot of people wanted it to be (perhaps particularly those that had already seen Blair Witch). The ending is the thing which sets the seal on the difference between this movie and Blair Witch. Blair Witch seems to have been intended purely to scare, the documentary style being used to heighten the creepy feel (this is clear from the way it was originally promoted and launched). Last Broadcast seems to be trying to make people think about the nature of stories and who says what is real (it might have more in common with Big Fish in this way).

First of all we have the Cable TV guys' story which they are constructing, it isn't reality but only what they want us to see; but then no, actually, it's the Documentary maker's story because he is constructing what he wants us to see; but actually no, it's the Film maker's story because they are constructing what they want us to see, and that is suddenly brought home to us at the end by the switch in camera work. Some people have complained about how this disrupts the sense of the movie but actually it is the sense of the movie. We have really been seeing it through the Film makers' lens all the time but that lens has only been showing us what the other cameras saw until it suddenly swings away to a broader scene.

You might think all this is pretentious and you might argue about how well it works but I think this was the intention of the FIlm makers: it doesn't give you a complete thesis about story and reality but it does make you think a bit. There is evidence that this was their intention in some of the dialogue about who shapes what is actually seen: the guy editing the tape for the police; the engineer 'teaching' the computer what to see on the damaged tape; the Documentary maker talking about the Jersey Devil being defined by the technology. This has some similarity to the stuff in Blair Witch about who knows the real story about the Blair Witch legend, but is more thouroughly developed in Last Broadcast which despite its superficial similarities is clearly quite a different kind of movie.

Hello... anybody still there...?

reply

Strangely enough, that works for me. I guess I was more interested in the way the story kept circling its tail (tale?) than in the "realism" of the camera angles. I mean, come on, this is a spoof of a low-rent public access show that turned into something very different at the very end. In that sense, at the very least, it works brilliantly.

I'm not normally scared by horror flicks these days (just the 30-second trailer for Blair Witch Project bored me to tears). But this one, In the Mouth of Madness and the original version of Ring all scared the heck outta me. They were the only 90's horror movies that did. Something about the manipulation of reality through written and filmed media gets to me, maybe. At any rate, I started out being amused and began to get very creeped out about an hour in. Maybe it was because I could see the ending coming. Maybe it was just the building-up of the atmosphere. I do have to say that I liked how they kept backing out and giving a wider and wider perspective of him at the end, which kept giving you more and more information. I was okay with the POV-change, just for that. We wanted an "answer" and they gave us one. Of course, it just ended up creating more questions, but it was at least an answer. I liked that.

reply

I understand kinoscope's analysis, but I think it could have been better executed. All in all, though, I'm one of the BWP crowd, and I agree with the poster that says

i enjoyed the film until you saw the filmmaker's face. that is where the film should have ended, or something else for an ending should have been thought of.


That would have been so much more effective. No lame 'denouncement' needed, and we would be still wondering about the killer, his motives, etc.

reply

Great observations. I think this is what the movie was about. Framing and creating narratives. Media manipulation.

reply


If you're going for something, go for it, don't rip off the viewer by doing camera long shots filmed by a third party cameraman in 16mm when you're supposed to be alone in the wilderness or killing someone alone with a DV - It just tanked....


Yeah... the third person camera completely ruined an otherwise good movie for me. They could have filmed it from the point of view of his own camera down on the floor, or whatever. I suppose the moviemakers really wanted to pull a GOTCHA on us with that ending, but honestly it just sucked.

BWP owns this movie, and one of the reasons is that the movie never 'breaks character' unlike TLB.

reply

I agree with you, the ending was just a big gotcha!
i watched this movie with my father on the IFC network and i became so involved in it i thought what i was watching had been true.Note: i had no knowledge of this movie at all before i saw it. So at the end it was a big gotcha and get me they did. Amazing movie if you ask me just because the images are so etched in my head.

reply

I thought the ending sucked. Don't know why, it just didn't sing to me.

reply

[deleted]

[deleted]

I live in New Jersey and when they mentioned the county where it took place or where the trial took place, I figured it was not true. The county they mentioned is not a real county in New Jersey. BTW - I liked the movie and yes, I was disappointed with the ending too. I caught the movie once on HBO about 2 years ago and have not seen it since.

B

reply

The first time I saw this movie was liek at 3am on HBO, and I missed the beginning of it so I thought it was a real documentary (like America Undercover). It was probably the sleep deprevation I was going through but the ending totally freaked me out and when I saw during the credits that it was indeed fake and just a movie I breathed a sigh of relief. When I saw the movie a second time, with a friend, the ending just seemed cheesy and out of place, maybe because I already knew it was fake. I agree with previous posters, it's a great movie, but it would have been better without the "surprise twist ending" that it had. The first time seeing it I didn't notice the difference in the camera at the end either, but the second time the difference stuck out like a sore thumb. Anyways, I still like this movie very much, and I like it a lot more than the Blair Witch Project. Everyone in the BWP were a bunch of *beep* the audience shouldn't care about people like that, the cable access guys in this movie (man I forgot their names already) though we're actually good people, an audience could care for these characters and genuinely feel disturbed by the fact they were brutally murdered.

reply

It was too... I don't know... horror flicky towards the end.
I just watched this film for the first time... thinking it was a real doc, then you see the face and then him attack the film retrievel chick. You know what would have been a great ending. Skipping the hwole him rapping her up *beep* just show the face of the narrator and him suffocating her and 25 seconds into him killing her--cut it and let the credits roll... that'd be much more shocking I think. Just end it abrupthly.

"I didn't mean to scare you. I just think you're interesting." -American Beauty-

reply

I watched this thinking (on IFC) that this was scary as hell, and I thought it was real too. But the ending, I was actually angry about it. I felt cheated.
This movie would have been better if they had left it as a real movie, or real documentary . Mystery would have been better than this ending. I hated it.

reply

...just show the face of the narrator...

The ending of The Last Broadcast left some serious strings untied.

How could a man of average build overpower and kill 3 young men?
How could he leave no footprints or knife fragments while tearing those men to shreds?
How and when did blood get on Jim Suerd's clothing without him knowing it?

And the part about him breaking into and exiting the editors house unseen and unheard is also problematical. The ending ruined an already mediocre movie.

reply

The first time I saw this movie, I was really disappointed in the ending. But after thinking alot about it, I realized it was PURPOSELY done... the difference in the film stock and camera angles. It was the film makers getting the last laugh, thats all. It fits.

reply

I think everyones on the same page. It was good and pretty scary until you found out it wasnt real at the end. personally it had me completely fooled and i dont think i had been so scared in my life, at the part where they show the frame of the supposed killer and it starts to come into focus but still kinda blurry, i just saw it on ifc too.

reply

I just watched this movie for the first time a couple of hours ago. I did not think for one minute it was real. I have mixed feelings about the ending. It would've worked better if it had not become a "real movie". Maybe just have the fallen camera filming the murder then going to static. Maybe then a note from the "producer" stating something like "the preceding events were documented from the period of yada yada yada, the footage was recovered from yada, yada, yada. To date the whereabouts of (whatever his name was) are still unknown". Also, I would've liked to have found out how the other guys were killed and what happened to that Johnny guy. Also, for anyone who may have thought this was a real documentary, didn't anyone find it strange that during Jim's 911 call he never mentioned his exact whereabouts? He just says he's 5-10 miles away from the pine barrens yet the 911 operator (who sounds like she's taken several anti-depressants) says she's sending out help. You clearly hear the phone hang up so you know there's no dialogue between them after that. That should've been a dead giveaway for anyone who may have thought is was real.

reply

[deleted]

He's calling from a call box, right?

Well, I don't know about the US, but in the UK the police and fire service can pinpoint your location from the callbox the call is being placed from. They don't need you to tell them.

It's been that way since the early 90's here so I guess the American system would be similar by the time this film is released?

reply

Did I think the ending was the best it could of been, no. I think it would of been better that the whole (or most) of the suffocation scene at the end was off of the guys camera, not a movie-movie look, or not really him walking in, but if the girl and him were together in the room as they figured it out, and as the image starts to come out he goes after her, and we realize after the murder of her that it was him. I don't know, i just think the ending could of been done in a better way, but the ending it self, was very good I thought. I didn't see that ending come at all, and that's when movies are at there best.

-I'd just like to note (might of been mentioned already), but the reason to me why he was making this documentary was because he wanted to show that jim was a innocent man. Maybe he didn't like the fact that someone else was getting credit for his work, and at the end of the movie you learn the fact that people gained a lot off of this murder. More jobs, etc... Well isn't he also making money off of it? With the doc. he is making? So, just keep that in mind.

reply

Sounds like most of you are pissed because you didn't see it coming...what makes the ending effective
is that you realize you have been watching a film project that was created in the mind of a killer...
simple, effective, chilling...end of story.

reply

[deleted]

i too thought it was a real thing that happened as it had been rec by a friend and they raved about it and i thought it was great till the ending which left me thinkin what the .......? so i watched the credits as always to see if there was an add on at the end only to read the bit sayin "none of these characters were real and dont tell any1" so i think my friend may have been fooled as they were going on about the endin being outta place but they think this is what happened to the tape girl?

so will have to ask if they noticed the end sentance

but worth watchin once but wudnt buy it.

reply

I thought the movie was good. First time I watched it, the ending did scare the heck out of me I must admit. If you liked this movie, you should check out a book called "diminished." It's only available at a website called Booksurge (I think it is just Booksurge dot com), but it's got some similarities to this. It's better though.

reply

I just saw this on IFC and initially was confused by the ending. I didn't recognize that the man in the image was the filmmaker and actually thought that the suffocation in the plastic scene was them acting out what might have occurred. I had to wait until it was on again and record that part and freeze the frame where the image was resolved to verify that it was the filmmaker.

I watched the movie because the description said that it was about searching for a mythical creature. I almost turned it off when I saw the documentary format but stayed with it and really became engrossed with the story. I feel that the ending would have been more effective if it didn't show him killing the film restorer but rather lengthening the moment where she resolves the image and sees that it is him and ending the movie right there with her look of horror.

reply

The Last Broadcast dissapointed me just like the Village. Sets you up for something exciting and flops over like a deflated balloon in the end. I would've been scarred for life had it been the cause of the Jersey Devil. I was alone when I was watching it, and I wasn't even at the end when it I was totally freaking out, almost spazzing. That weird chanting was really disorienting. It sent chills down your spine, you know? But I agree with everyone, had they not filmed it to show it was all made up, the whole thing would've been believable. I would've had it where David dropped the camera, and after that, he suddenly falls over too, and that's when he stands up and says, "Oh, what happened?" grunts, and then realizes a body is right next to him. This whole thing was the Jersey Devil posessing him. I think that would've been great. No one would go near the pine barrens after that.

Leave it to Beaver...and you'll be sorry you did!

reply

To begin with, I thought the Blair Witch was absolute garbage. I wasted cash on it in the theater and even tried again on video to see if I somehow missed something. No, the movie was a piece of crap. When you say it was scary, or brilliant, what exactly is it that you're referring to? I don't get scared or impressed by watching three bad actors working themselves up, especially when everyone knows it's fake and doubly so when there's nothing ever actually onscreen to be afraid of. To the people who hated the ending of Last Broadcast...What is it you saw at the end of Blair Witch that made any sense, answered any questions, or made the whole movie worth watching?

Well, I need not continue, my very in-depth review of BW is up here for anyone to see. What I do want to say is that I liked the end of LB, though I can easily see why anyone would not- their complaints are mostly understandable. Yes, the end is abrupt and screws up the narrative, bringing you "into" the movie awkwardly and putting a different, confusing perspective on events. It asks fair questions too, such as "now who's filming the murderer?"

What I do like is the message of the film, which is very missable if you don'y pay close attention. There's dialog late in the film where the narrator/murderer explains that through the media, the truth can be altered, covered, or completely distorted, and the search for realism can easily be diverted or changed with "the editing tools" of a "documentary film". Clearly, the end of this film is expressing that this is a killer who thought highly of himself and wanted to see how far he could explore his crime and how well he could get away with it. On the filmmakers' commentary, they reveal that the truth comes down to a single frame of video, and the killer is disappointed with that". This movie is basically the killer's own laugh at how well he has manipulated the truth and gotten away with a brutal crime. Listening to the commentary is intruiging if you can ever check out the dvd- the creators explain their message, motives, and specific details such as where to look for giveaway shots, symbolic imagery and clue-revealing dialog.

As to the ending, yes I agree that it comes out of left field. Shooting itself in the foot as these movies often do (The Village) they become acceptable to the open-minded or to the viewer who can accept the basic theme and message of what's been said by the end. Sure I would have preferred a monster attack, but that's just me. I choose though to accept this movie (indeed with flaws) based on the plot that the creators were going for. Much like how my cousin spent half an hour trying to come up with a good reason for why he liked the Blair Witch despite its absence of good acting, script, or scares (he sees it as a sort of supplement to the more interesting backstory created FOR the film), I don't think this film is for everybody but I do appreciate the story that they were trying to tell, but only if I look at it a certain way.

Besides, at least this movie tried to do something new and explore its message in a way that you don't immediately guess. This film gets crapped on. Meanwhile, everyone loves movies like ones that spend two hours establishing that, inexplicably, a dead girl comes through a videotape and out of the tv so she can kill complete strangers. It's easy to see why today's movies aim so low, and filmmakers who want to aim a little higher become obsolete.

"I kick ass for the LORD!!!"
-Kung fu priest, "Dead Alive"

reply

Can someone please explain it though? I'm sort of in the dark here. I have no idea what he was doing. Was he the killer? Why did he do it? I don't understand. Some interrprut! (heavy accent) I do not understand!

Leave it to Beaver...and you'll be sorry you did!

reply

Man I feel soooo stupid. This movie just came on HBO and i caught it about 15 minutes after it started. I thought it was a real documentary the whole time until the end part. I got so excited when she found the face and was really into it to see what would happen and then it turns into a real movie.

reply

manalone,
The difference for me was that in Blair Witch, you had the possibility of the witch herself having stood Michael in the corner, or, the possessed soul of the killer who took kids to the cabin and made them face the corner while the others were killed (referenced earlier in the film), or was the killer and the witch one and the same? You see. Things that make you hmmmm...
Last Broadcast failed in it's ending if you ask me, and when that fuzzy image was cleared up to be that dude screaming, it was so out of place it was laughable.

"Now go away or I should taunt you a second time."

reply

Actually, I can think of two ways to explain the last shot without taking it outside of the context of the pseudodocumentary:

1. Jim did it himself. He set up a camera at a distance and put it on an automatic timer on the telephoto lens.

2. Somebody else is the actual, final editor of the film. This anonymous person (or perhaps we saw him or her and never clued in) took Jim's footage and voiceovers and edited them to make them look as if Jim were the auteur--then added that final shot as a reveal that he wasn't. Remember that Jim, himself, sets up this possibility by talking about finding the messed-up footage of the original expedition and having it examined by the expert that he kills. We already have a whole line of people filming different scenes within the context of the documentary. There's no reason not to add one more.

The problematical scene in terms of perspective is not the ending but the expert's death. However, if the person who films Jim at the end is his accomplice, it wouldn't be all that hard to set up the filming of the actual murder. He or she could be there before Jim and have everything set up as if to film the revelation of the face, while in fact doing it to catch the murder on film.

The main question this would leave is motive--not just Jim's but the accomplice's. What is the point of the last few shots? To glorify Jim as the auteur? To sell him out to the cops? Or is this meant to glorify the anonymous accomplice, the true auteur, who perhaps made the film after eliminating the final obstacle to his or her greatness--Jim, himself? Is the true monster behind the camera lens all along?

But the smashing-of-the-fourth-wall approach works fine for me, too.

reply

Dude you got the characters messed up. It was David who shot the documentary. Jim was already dead. He died in prison.

You heard him, slow ahead! Slow ahead! I can go slow ahead! C'mon down and chum some of this S***!

reply

Hi

It Was A MOVIE.

There was no Jim
There was no David

Like all MOVIES it was just made up.

No one killed anyone. it was purely made for entertainment.

The ending makes perfect sense if you think about it that way. This film just had the balls to come out at the end & say "look its just a film we can do what we want"




I think the ending makes the film.

reply

David killed Michelle because she could finger him as the real Fact or Fiction killer.

David killed Steve and Locus in order to frame Jim for it, so he would have enough material for his documentary to prove his point about how the constant deluge of information in which we live made the actual TRUTH about what happened irrelevant.

The corpses weren't really obliterated. David killed them all one by one, left just enough of their "tattered remains" around to make it look like they were all torn to pieces, and hid or buried the rest of the victims' bodies he didn't need. He killed each separately and then staged a "bloody aftermath" for the police to find.

Remember, Jim was on IFC chat for hours (his alibi), so the killer had HOURS to go about his business.

He did it, banking on the police following the trail of false and circumstantial evidence to the creepy, disturbed (but innocent) Jim Suerd.

After being framed, Jim and the investigation into the murders provided David with enough material to illustrate his thesis:

The truth of what really happened was unimportant next to how Jim was portrayed in the media, that the mountain of "information" used to try and convict Jim was so large, the the small (but accurate) amount data that pointed to his innocence was sifted out as unimportant.

The disturbing implication of the film is that not only did the real murderer get away with it, he committed murder as part of a larger experiment, in order to prove a point, so he could make a movie...

The murders, the trial, the reason they happened, and David's film only had lasting intrinsic value as entertainment fodder for a world that eventually got bored with it.

A horror film with a theme....? How many of THOSE does Hollywood churn out...?

reply

warning may spoil the film if you have never seen it.

For all you people that dont like this film / ending you clearly dont understand the plotline in the sligthest. the ending was amazing and made an important observation on the media being like vampires, and in this case doing the killing and selling it, which in some cases happens in real life esspecialy in the war that is currently happening in iraq. Oh and by the way this film came out before the blair witch project it actuly inspired the blair witch writers that made a bad job of the inspirational aspects. another thing about the last broadcast is the fact that it isnt supposed to be a horror movie its a doccumentry.

another thing is the fact that it leaves the plot open (if you had listened to the buildup of the film ,) the fact that the killer was ambidexterous and no metalic fragments were found on the body which suggests this killer / person could actuly be the jersy devil in duscise (ie ambidexterous like a natural predator / lions and assuch)

i so wish people would think before speaking and didnt go for brand lables over genuinly good storylines like media dictated lemmings to the slaughter.

ps i dont care about my poor grammar / spelling

ps ps the guy above me is right in what he got from that film im happy to see people who think do exist

reply

Yes, the idea is a good one, but the movie sucked. There were so many places where this just lacked anything solid it's not funny. It also requires many of the characters to be stone stupid. Other than ten minutes of decent footage, this stunk.

reply

um, rick, not to be a b!tch but GIANT DUH! i don't think anybody with half a brain believed that this was REAL. we KNOW it was a movie.

it was a POORLY MADE MOVIE.

from the first scene, the 911 call, it was a poorly made movie. tell me, WHAT 911 operator sounds like that? she sounded like she'd either just swallowed a mouthful of xanax or was trying to seduce jim into phonesex. whether or not we are to assume that the "callbox" "jim" had "hitchhiked" to had a GPS system so that the operator knew his location is beside the point. she would have confirmed the location and kept him on the phone longer and asked him more questions. one of my closest friends is a 911 operator and no 911 operator on earth would handle a call that way. SLOPPY FILMMAKING! the rest of the "documentary" was just about as believable. i couldn't have bought in if i had wanted to (and i didn't really want to anyway).

by the end i was just annoyed. annoyed that i'd given this movie my time and attention. annoyed that anybody could possibly think this thing was somehow better than blair witch. annoyed at the condescending attitude of the filmmakers toward the audience. "message" my f@t ass. yeah, video editing can twist reality & distort truth, you've really broken new ground with that one. guess what? advertisers LIE. lawyers don't care about justice, only money. santa claus doesn't come on xmas eve and there's no tooth fairy. what other PAINFULLY obvious realities of life would you like to pretend to have discovered, oh brilliant makers of The Last Broadcast?

i smoke a lot of weed and i sit around with my friends and come up with a lot of really cool ideas that i think would be great to actually do. thankfully i don't follow through with them as they'd be irrelevant and a waste of others' time. unfortunately these guys don't have that filter. and The Last Broadcast is the result of that.

GOD I HATED THIS MOVIE.

reply

[deleted]

Hey,

It was a great film up until the twist ending, which was a bit of a cop-out. With the 'impossible second cameraman' filming the asphyixiation,the abrupt change from documentary style to guerilla style, the Narrator-killer's Lack of Motive... your suspension of disbelief goes out the proverbial window. The disappointing ending doesn't ruin the film, but it takes away from it somewhat-The film sorely needed a final shot of the Jersey Devil sneaking up behind the Narrator to devour him!

reply

It fell miles short of expectations.

reply

David killed Michelle because she could finger him as the real Fact or Fiction killer.

But wasn't David the one who gave her the messed up tape in the first place? Why would he do that if he didn't want her to find out?
He said when Jim died in prison, the tape 'landed' on his doorstep.

www.myspace.com/fallen_grace19

reply

So David 'Jersey Devil' could waste more time and show the viewer he was in a man's disguise and then kill someone else. For the viewer, of course. I don't think a creature like the Jersey Devil would give a rat's rear if the cops discovered he was "David". Unless David was just another cookie cutter killer, like I said.

Most of this post is sarcasm disguised as truth. Or vice versa. The ending capped off a ridiculous movie.

reply

This film gets my vote for worst ending in film history. It brought the entire movie down a couple notches.

This is not the equivalent of an "unreliable narrator" in a book or film, which can be good if done well. It is more like the equivalent of making a serious PG-rated family drama, and then having ninjas jump out and everyone goes into a big kung fu fight.

Like that, only not funny, and without any other value.

reply

its trying to hint the mind of a killer ie the madness and the games, mentaly disturbed murdures play in order to satisfy there lust for killing

as shown in another thread, in the storyline the video is not for the public to watch its a film to pay homage to his accomplishment of sucessfull killings

like when a murderur in real life may have items of there victims or even 100s of newspaper clipings of people they have killed

also about the tape landing on his doorstep does that mean he has an accomplice?
the open bits are perfect and leave the story open for the imagination to run wild

scary stuff some of the most scary things in life are about the imagination running wild even when it comes to paranormal events etc

belive me this film isnt deep dont get me wrong but im saying how good the storyline is as it makes you think or atleast i did bare in mind this film is now 10 years old and on virtualy no budget id say it met expectations.

reply

"as shown in another thread, in the storyline the video is not for the public to watch its a film to pay homage to his accomplishment of sucessfull killings"

I'm not sure that would make it any better. If anything, you'd have thought that would make him want to spice it up or beef it up. One of the two. Instead, it's lackluster. Certainly nothing glorious and the ending makes him look like a tree fairie.

"the open bits are perfect and leave the story open for the imagination to run wild"

By the midway point my mind was too dulled to care and by the end I was so infuriated I wanted NOT to imagine anything but returning the dam thing to the store.

"belive me this film isnt deep dont get me wrong but im saying how good the storyline is as it makes you think or atleast i did bare in mind this film is now 10 years old and on virtualy no budget id say it met expectations."

Well, when expectations are zero.....

reply

i was really shocked at the ending! the way he was killing her with her eyes still on his as he moves closer to her face... as an actress she must of been *s h i t* scared to do that scene!!! but i was really *f u c k e d* off that it was all a show and what came before was planned... but i liked it! it was different!

reply

It was pretty gritty and real wasn't it? The general ending of the film hurt it a bit, I would have preferred it stayed a documentary style supernatural mystery and with the current ending as an alternate ending you can place in the movie on the dvd, but it works (even if they took you out of the documentary experience). A great creepy as hell film either way.

reply

[deleted]

Personally I think the ending fit because it really was a "joke" aimed at the viewer. The whole point of the movie (IMO) is that the truth can can twisted 180 degrees depending on how something is edited. That is why Jim Seward got convicted in the first place. So here we are buying in to all of this and then........... boom... WE get played as the suckers. The "documentary" style gives way to a "textbook" movie style. It's now professionally shot and who's filming? When I first saw the ending I didn't much care for it but the more I thought about it the more I appreciated the message.

reply

The ending was incredibly lame.
For the last murder, the film switches, from gritty documentary to cheesy home-made actionmovie (or what).
I think this switching totally destroyed the film.
Furthermore, these action-takes, as our killer strangles his victim look really amateurish through that digicam... It was like watching an episode of AVGN, but this time it's supposed to be serious.

reply

Not a fan of the ending.

If I could redo the film, I would have put in some more strange/weird evidence in relation to the murders, making Jim's guilt seem even more in doubt from our perspective, but he still gets railroaded. Then when film girl decodes the mangled tape, it shows some sort of warped creature. They go to the cops, who blow them off, then go to the media, who makes a big deal out of it but goes nowhere. Then some freaky stuff happens to film girl and David(?), and then end of dead. Much consternation in the media about "were they right?". Fini.

I get the psychological aspect, but for the original creepiness (and add a little more), this could have been a great straight up spook fest.

Just my opinion.

reply