Broken
BROKEN (2007)
Starring Nadja Brand, Eric Colvin, Atesh Salih and Abbey Stirling.
Screenplay by Simon Boyes and Adam Mason.
Directed by Simon Boyes and Adam Mason.
Distributed by Dimension Extreme. 110 minutes. Not Rated.
Let me say right off the bat that I am not squeamish. I have seen hundreds of horror films — and while I’d be lying if I said that it was my favorite genre, I can handle them just fine. I am not a prude.
And yet, twelve minutes into the DVD of Broken, I had to turn it off.
Life is too short to spend even another second in this film’s foul company.
I must stress that I never, ever, EVER do that.
Over the years, I have sat through the entire running time of some of the most horrible films ever. I can’t remember the last time I stopped watching a movie just because it was so distasteful. Maybe never. Beyond the fact that it is my job, I strongly believe (it’s the romantic in me) that even the worst film might have some redeeming features.
Because of this, I can’t in all fairness claim to be able to say whether or not Broken is a good film. Maybe there was some stunning twist, things change and it turns out to be a masterpiece. Maybe it truly becomes a terrific scare film.
I will never know, because I was literally turned off so much by the beginning that I turned it off.
I know the slasher-porn of the Saw movies and the Hostel movies quickly became chic (and just as quickly are falling out of favor, which I think is probably best for the world.) I even watched (and reviewed) the first Saw and thought it was a relatively effective genre film. I’ve never seen one of the Hostel films, but that was more out of lack of interest than any sense of dread.
I was actually semi-looking forward to Broken from the press description. It sounded like an interesting story. A mother is kidnapped in the woods and must try to escape so she can save her daughter. Unfortunately, I didn’t make it far enough to get to the interesting part.
Actually, I turned it off right after the mother realized she had been kidnapped — but I have to admit the fact that the daughter turned out to be like seven-years-old just dismayed me even more — it’s bad enough watching grown women being tortured, I have no interest in potentially seeing it happen to little girls.
As so often happens in these films, Broken starts with a brief showing of the last victim. A woman is kidnapped and buried alive. She somehow gets out of the casket, only to be cold-cocked by the rifle butt of a shadowy man in a full length coat. She comes to consciousness only to find that she has been set up to some bizarre contraption, a noose around her neck, a razor blade sewn inside her stomach, and she has undo the stitches and reach inside of herself to get it out to cut the rope before hanging herself. When she is able to do that and falls on the ground, her entrails dangling from her gaping wound, the man appears again and holds the rifle to her head, asking if she wants more, trying to convince her to shoot herself.
That’s not scary. That’s sick. It’s twisted and evil and demented. It is not entertaining to me. By the way, the film is shot in an odd-herky-jerky style which sometimes makes it seem like a poorly animated film rather than live action, which just makes it even more disorienting.
Then we get to our main character, a nice woman in her 30s with a little girl and who has just gotten home from a surprisingly good blind date. We only have a few minutes to bond with her, but she seems like a nice enough person — happy, loving, a good friend, a good mother. Then the mom awakes in the casket, bleeding, moaning, slamming her hands on the lid trying to get out.
And this is where I get out. I’m not sitting through that shit all over again.
Now there are some people out there — you know who you are — who find this fun viewing. If so you might enjoy Broken. For the rest of us, it’s just dismaying evidence of the inhumanity and sickness of mankind.
Jay S. Jacobs
Copyright ©2007 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: October 10, 2007.
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