Panic Fest Film Festival Coverage
Carnage Radio review.
A serial killer strikes the heart of small-town America. Carnage Radio defies structure expectations. For better and for worse.
Festival reviews will not contain spoilers.
Carnage Radio
Directed by James Fite
Written by James Fite
Starring Mike Ferguson, Olivia Clari Nice, Brandon Elonzae, Brandon J. Johnson, Rachel De Rouen and Zach Campbell
Carnage Radio Review
Interesting choices can make a good story great. Breaking the rules can make a standard setup more interesting. Carnage Radio experiments with these ideas to sometimes fascinating effect. At its heart, the story is as simple as it gets. The presentation, however, doesn’t play out the way the “rules” would normally dictate. Risks should be applauded…and, truly, some of Carnage Radio’s greatest strengths come from taking them. The number of choices that happen leaves one to question the overall design. Is this format breaking with a purpose…or a narrative that lacks an understanding of structure?
Carnage Radio is a feature length expansion of writer/director James Fite’s own short of the same name. It begins familiar enough. A woman in a shower. A knife wielding psycho. We know how this goes. Or do we? After the opening titles we join the police investigation. We see footage of the event that the police aren’t privy to. We all come to the same conclusion. The woman died after slipping…bashing her head in the process. We know that this was a result of seeing an armed assailant…lead of the investigation Sarah (Olivia Clari Nice) suspects something is amiss as well. The woman certainly slipped. But…why was she covered in a towel? Perhaps her husband, in a state of shock, did so when he found her. Not much to go on.
For our purposes, however, it’s a lot. The expectation of serial killer and victim has immediately been (somewhat) subverted. It seems like a small choice…but it’s a warning of things to come. Carnage Radio makes bigger choices that depart from expectations. For starters…there’s no main character in this story. Not really, anyway. It’s the story of a town. Occupants of the town are afforded equal opportunities to take the lead. It’s an interesting choice…and one that becomes jarring in the third act. We’ll get to that in a minute.
It also doesn’t hide the identity of the killer. It doesn’t need to…we don’t know who he is. This isn’t a mystery. This isn’t a maniac hiding in plain site…waiting to be revealed. He’s just another face we’re introduced to. As casually as the rest. He just has a different purpose than everyone else. He’s brought death to a close-knit community. Seemingly choosing his victims based on who calls into the local radio program…Carnage Radio.
Brad (Brandon J. Johnson) is the host of Carnage Radio. For a time, we think he’s the lead of the story. Think First Time Caller or Monolith…but we can see what’s happening outside of his studio. Brad takes forefront of Carnage Radio for a bit…we learn about his family and see his little slice of small-town life. Eventually, Brad passes the lead over to Sarah and her continuing investigation into the murders. She pieces together that callers are becoming victims. Using that information (and Brad) to try and draw the killer out.
Just when you think Sarah is the main character…she’s taken out of the game. She does, in fact, find the killer. It isn’t difficult. He isn’t really hiding. Not from us, anyway. Her storyline moves to the background and leaves Carnage Radio in an interesting place. One that starts making you question the design of the story. Her police chief (Mike Ferguson) gets a turn at the center of the story. Even though he’s barely appeared in the narrative before this. A jarring third act move that places an unknown character front and center.
Then it does it again. Another character, Alice, here playing a more traditional final girl archetype, becomes the lead. We’ve spent a little time with her…and it does tie back to Brad who has, like the others, seen his POV relegated to the background. This is where Carnage Radio’s choices really start to make you wonder. There is no denying that the structure is unique. An experiment that pays off in refreshing interest…but one that creates awkward unfamiliarity within several key moments. When you accept that the town, not Brad or Sarah or Alice or the Chief of Police, is the main character…it makes sense. It’s jarring, nonetheless.
Carnage Radio is a patient move that struggles to pick up the pace. Fitting, for a movie about small town life. Like the break from structure expectations, however, what’s right for the story doesn’t fully work in delivering entertainment in viewing it. The movie looks great. A consistency in visuals that matches the (normally) sameness of the town. Choices that make complete sense for the story. That’s a highlight of Carnage Radio. Perhaps what they add up to is best decided by the eye of the beholder. So is the answer to whether these choices were all made with that purpose…or for less artistic reasons.
Scare Value
There’s a fine line in film between breaking constructs with purpose and not understanding why the constructs exist. Carnage Radio initially gets mileage out of doing the former. You may begin to question, however, if it’s really about the latter. There are some odd choices here. Some work…others confuse. And whatever the intention…the result is a slow burn that chooses to light new fuses instead of letting them explode.
