On the charts
🏆 Won 4 Primetime Emmys. 8 wins & 2 nominations total
The premise
An evening of TV programming is interrupted by breaking news: in Charleston, South Carolina, two Coast Guard personnel and two members of a local news team have been taken hostage by a group of terrorists who are seeking to destroy the triggers of all local nuclear devices. Moreover, the terrorists threaten to detonate their own device if their demands are not met.
Horror Vault's take
Presented entirely as a live television broadcast, Special Bulletin drops viewers into a harrowing hostage crisis unfolding in real time off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina. A group of terrorists with a homemade nuclear device hold news crew members captive while issuing demands to the government — and to a watching nation. The film weaponizes the familiar grammar of breaking news coverage to generate suffocating dread, blurring the line between fiction and reality in deeply unsettling ways. Long before "found footage" became a genre staple, this NBC production was exploiting our trust in the television screen to devastating effect.
Content: Depictions Of Nuclear Threat And Mass-Casualty Scenarios, Intense Simulated News Coverage That May Be Distressing To Sensitive Viewers
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