The Last Broadcast [1998]

PLEASE DONT POST SPOILERS IN COMMENTS



http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0122143/




The film deals with a documentary film-maker named David Leigh, and his investigation of the Fact or Fiction murders, where a pair of cable access hosts are murdered in mysterious circumstances. Leigh sets out to find the truth behind these killings while making his documentary.



Fact or Fiction was a show dealing with unsolved mysteries and the paranormal, its two hosts were Steven "Johnny" Avkast and Locus Wheeler. Initially successful as a show, we find out through Leigh's investigations that the show was failing, and was near cancellation. It is at this point that Avkast comes up with the idea of a live Internet Relay Chat section of the show.



It is during one such chat that a caller gives Avkast the idea of searching for The Jersey Devil in the Pine Barrens (the film only mentions the Jersey Devil, however, and gives absolutely no background details of the legend). Leaping on this idea, Avkast and Wheeler recruit Rein Clackin, a soundman who allegedly can record the paranormal, and Jim Suerd, a psychic who Leigh has discovered to be emotionally disturbed.



The plan is for the four to enter the Pine Barrens with Suerd leading them to the location of The Jersey Devil. During the hunt, they would broadcast a live show simultaneously via television, internet and amateur radio.



The four enter the Barrens but only Suerd emerges alive, the others are killed. Avkast's body is never found, though it is made clear in the following trial that he could not have survived the massive blood loss found at the crime scene.



Leigh then runs through the trial, Suerd as the only survivor is also the only suspect. To aid the prosecution case they employ a video engineer (nicknamed "The Killer Cutter") to compile a portrait of the group's trip using the surviving film footage found at the crime scene.



Suerd is found guilty and is imprisoned, though there is doubt over whether he did it as his clothes were not drenched in blood and there is evidence he was engaged in an irc during the times of the murders.



Before anything can be proven, Suerd commits suicide in prison and the case is considered closed by the authorities. However Leigh has a box sent to him containing a damaged videotape reel, which Leigh assumes is tape from the Fact or Fiction team thought not to exist. A data retrieval expert named Shelly Monarch is called in to reconstruct the images on the tape as much as possible. She finds that not only have Wheeler and Clacklin's deaths been caught on tape, but that Suerd could not have committed the murders.



What is also caught is a blurred image of the real killer.