Nightwaves (2003)

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Like other comment said the basic idea is obviously taken form Rear Window.But thats where the similarities end.This movie has a much more complicated plot,where the original Hithcock movie didn't have any such ambitions.I think its a job well done,interesting to the end,having seen Rear Window doesn't help you realize what is going on in this movie. Sherilyn Fenn is a good actress with her own star appeal,it would be unfair to compare to arguably the greatest stars Hollywood has ever seen,who were in Rear Window,but Fenn holds her own and is always interesting.A movie deserving a much better rating than 4.9 that is now,i give it a 6.

This movie is just a "high-tech" version of Alfred Hitchcock's classic movie, Rear Window. But instead of a man seeing a murder being committed while looking through a telescope, Shelby Naylor (played by Sherilyn Fenn) while using her dead husband's radio scanner hears a husband and wife fighting with each other over a cell phone, and of course, shortly thereafter the woman is found dead. And like Jimmy Stewart in the classic film, Naylor's life is in danger after she reports what she hears to the police.If this wasn't such a recycled plot, the movie might have been much better as Sherilyn Fenn is a talented actress. But I couldn't give this movie more than a 5 out ten stars for only being so-so. With such a basic plot you pretty much know what's going to happen, so it becomes how well the actors do their jobs along the way, which is nothing spectacular.

(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.For more insanity, please visit: comeuppancereviews.com