Nightwaves

In Boston, Shelby Naylor (Sherilyn Fenn) is a rising writer at her magazine. Her husband likes to spend his spare time listening to the police scanner. Business partner Tom Williams is their friend. The couple gets into a car accident. Her husband is killed and she has extensive physical therapy. Someone breaks into her home. The cop suggests listening to the police scanner which has a tendency of picking up other transmissions. She records the scanner like her husband used to do and may have recorded damning evidence in a murder.

The premise is sorta like Rear Window. Of course, this is nowhere near that classic. Why the cop would suggest eavesdropping on the police scanner is beyond me. It would be more tense if her activity is illegal and hidden. After all, she is listening in on private transmissions. It would heighten the danger and that's what these thrillers need. Every bit of danger needs to be elevated. She should be more disabled for more danger. The cinematography is strictly TV movie level. It's all very flat. Any hope of an intense thriller is drained away. There is no tension in this wannabe thriller.

This made-for-TV mystery/thriller would be relentlessly silly even without the Magical Omniscient Police Scanner. But with it, "Nightwaves" becomes golden camp.

Ungracefully aging Sherilyn Fenn is a widow who overhears what she thinks is a murder on her dead husband's police scanner, then begins to doubt what she heard once her testimony helps indict a seemingly innocent man.

Fenn, who those of us old enough to remember "Twin Peaks" also remember that little trick she did with her tongue and a maraschino cherry stem, is supposed to be the star here, despite her dowdy housewife looks and the worst pageboy haircut since Cathy Rigby's "Peter Pan."

But in this show she gets totally upstaged by her dead husband's amazing computer. Its LCD monitor is touch-screen in no way that makes sense. Moreover, its police scanner software can somehow pick up cell phone and even landline conversations out of thin air.

Of course, Fenn's character tunes in at exactly the right times to hear things like death threats and murders, all taking place in crystal clarity over these massive speakers that look like "Star Wars" background droids in the jawa van.

And yet, despite this incredible, nonexistent-in-the-real-world technology, it's all wired into an old-school cassette deck, on which she records these conversations. Seriously, does your car even have a cassette deck anymore? Do your kids know what a cassette used to be?

Fenn, who's become every other '80s actress who may as well be Ally Sheedy, does just as good a job here as Ally Sheedy would, and that's not a compliment.

No one else you've ever heard of is in this movie, and none of them you'll ever probably hear of again.

The ending is stupid.

This really wasn't bad for a TV psychological thriller type movie. Cherilyn Fenn did a nice job as Shelby and the premise was somewhat intriguing. The whole plot line of Shelby listening on and becoming obsessed with, the radio scanner, was done well and much of the Movie took place at night so there was always an appropriate moodiness to the movie. It's not a must see but it does make one want to know what is going to happen next.

I wouldn't call this the best TV movie out there by any means but it holds one's attention nicely and the worst things I can say about it is it's rather long and there are times where it moves rather slowly. But the movie does very well in the atmosphere department and having Fenn as the star was a good choice, as she's pretty good here. I suppose, in a way the movie could have held more intrigue as this was an interesting premise to build a movie on and though this is far from excellent if one is just looking for a good old fashioned TV mystery to invest some time in, one could do worse.

(There are Spoilers) The movie "Nightwaves" story-line is just too unlikely and convoluted to be taken seriously. We have this couple who are engaged in a violent domestic dispute thats picked up and recored corded by magazine writer Shelby Naylor, Sherilyn Fenn, on her, or her late husbands Peter (Kevin Jubinville), state-of-the-are scanner system.

Shelby who's laid up at home from a traffic accident that killed her husband Peter at the beginning of the movie becomes fascinated with what she picks up on her scanner and becomes a news and voyeur freak. Listening in on police radio reports and even cell and home phone conversations of her neighbors. One of them is Shelby's next-door neighbors the Birkwell's David & Brenda, David Nerman & Emma Campball, who seem to be at it every day and night.

It later turns out that Brenda is missing and Shelby feeling that it's her duty, as a law abiding citizen, to get in touch with the Boston D.A office and turn over the tapes she made of the Birkwell spats which leads to David's arrest in his wife's disappearance. Later finding the headless body of a woman in a nearby dumpster the police pathologist positively identifies her as the missing Brenda Birkwell which has David now facing a first degree murder charger in his wife's death.

Up to this point the made-for-TV movie "Nightwaves" holds your interest but as it reveals the truth about Brenda's death and what, if anything, her husband David had to do with it it really goes too far in trying to be either too cute or brainy and falls completely apart. There's this mysterious and creepy looking guy, who for some strange reason reminds me of Senator John Kerry, Tom Williams ,Bruce Dinsmore, popping up all over the place. Tom somehow knows a lot more then he's leading Shelby on to makes you wonder if he has any idea of what he's supposed to be doing in the movie.

It turns out that Tom, who's a good friend of both Shelby and her late husband Peter, was somehow involved with the Birkwell's in a 5 million dollar insurance policy with David as the beneficiary if his wife Brenda dies or is killed or murdered. The movie goes to pot with it going in so many different directions that by the time it's over you have no idea to just what happened in regards to Brenda's deaths, incredibly she died twice in the movie. Even poor and dead Peter is dug out of his gave, via an audio tape, to give testimony in the David Birkwell murder case.

Trying not to give too much away in the movie's plot it seems that David was a lot more active in his love life then Brenda thought he was and it wasn't with her. Shelby starts to realize that David was not responsible in Brenda's death but it seems too late to save him from being convicted for first degree murder. Even more puzzling is why David doesn't want the one person, which happens not to be Shelby, who can prove him to be innocent in his wife's death to be call as a witness in his defense?

The final ten or so minutes in "Nightwaves" is just too much to take with so many loose ends being uncovered and presented instead as solid evidence. You begin to wonder if your not somehow hallucinating from unknowingly breathing in some bad grass at the office birthday party or just too mind numb and tired, from a hard days work, to be able see and think normally.

This is basically a female version of "Rear Window". Sherilyn Fenn stars as Shelby, who loses her husband in a car accident. After his death, she copes by listening to a police scanner. She then overhears a couple arguing. Shelby thinks a innocent woman is dead and following her. Of course nobody believes her. "Nightwaves" is very heavy with clichés. Nothing original happens here. There's one scene where it's supposed to be raining outside and you don't see any rain at all, You hear sound effects. Sherilyn Fenn is okay in this, but she is above TV movie of the week material.

The box art is also very misleading. This is not a "Red Shoe Diaries"-type movie.

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