Broken (2007)

Too much of everything

good back-story, and good acting

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

The central premise has promise: Single mother Hope (a fine and personable performance by Nadja Brand) gets abducted by a cruel and cunning mysterious man (well played with chilling understatement by Eric Colvin) who holds her captive in a remote woodland camp and tortures her in order to bend the poor lass to his merciless will. While writers/directors Adam Mason and Simon Boyes succeed with creating and sustaining an unwaveringly grim and harsh tone as well as make good use of the beautiful, yet desolate and isolated sylvan setting, they crucially fail to generate much in the way of tension and don't develop the character of Hope thoroughly enough for the viewer to have any actual emotional investment in her miserable plight. Granted, the convincing graphic gore and moments of sadistic violence pack a nasty wallop, but the sluggish pacing, talky script, and generally flat execution make this picture a rather tedious chore to sit through. However, the filmmakers still deserve a few extra points for avoiding the usual teens-in-peril formula, an earnest (if inert) attempt at gritty realism, and, most of all, the genuinely startling and unexpected surprise bummer nihilistic ending. It's just that this movie doesn't have the essential punch or vigor it needs to cook the way that it should. Erik Wilson's stark cinematography provides an appropriately dark and gloomy look. The spare rattling score by Emma Holand and Gavin Miller does the flesh-crawling trick. A strictly so-so flick.

I saw the world premier of this movie about a number of years ago and loved it. I have seen it since and loved it. It is a guilty pleasure as nothing good happens to any of the characters in this movie. It is the type of movie where all the shocks are real. If you enjoyed the book about slavery called Perfect Victim and mixed it with Saw 2 you might get a flavour of this movie. It does not pull its punches and is effectively made.The plot of this movie revolves around Nadja Brand who is the director's wife. They make a good team as he gets a compelling performance out of her. She is seen drinking in a bar and then she wakes up with a noose round her neck, balancing on a log and some bad stitching around her stomach. Later on we see her again and it is here where the movie gets interesting as we find he using all her womanly guile to survive. I do not want to give to much of the plot away.Suffice to say this movie rocks and if you want to see a movie that makes the saw series seem tame, this is it. Also ever wondered what it would be like to have a slave or be a modern day slave?? Watch this movie and all will be revealed. You have to have a strong stomach to see this harrowing classic.

This movie begins with a brutal opening scene which sets a very dark and horrifying tone for the rest of the movie. I think what I loved most about Broken was the connection between the victim and villain. I don't want to get too much into the plot but the deeper and unspoken aspect of how the relationship worked between the two seemed so realistic to me that it made it much more real and creepy. This movie made it seem like this situation could happen to just anyone.I loved the main actress and thought she did a wonderful job playing the victim and then adjusting to her surroundings in order to be able to survive. Another thing that made it more realistic was she was just a normal woman. Gone was the Hollywood girls with big hair, short skirts and huge fake boobs. This was your average attractive woman, single mom, lonely and looking for love. She was human… not some airheaded college student who runs upstairs when the door is downstairs. She made this movie seem that much more real to me.I also found the camera work to be dark and despairing. They were outside, yet the atmosphere was dark and gray. It looked cold and everything looked sad and morbid.I truly enjoyed this movie. A very nice surprise for a movie that is super low budget. One thing I would like to add about this movie was that they were comparing it to Saw. I think that this comparison ruined the movie for some folks as they watched it expecting a Saw type thing and ended up watching something completely different, not even comparable. I don't know why they would make that comparison, it only seemed to hurt the reviews.Overall a great film that pulled me in right from the beginning.ZombieSteak.com - Discover a new world of horror films, designed just for you.

Broken is simply an awful movie. It is an abusive husband's wet dream and an abused wife's worst nightmare. A crazy guy in the woods who looks about as harmless as Barney Fyfe kidnaps women and forces them to wash his pots and pans for him. He keeps his stash of women chained to trees and if they cry too much he cuts their tongues on with his big knife. He keeps one particular women chained to that tree for about two months until she finally gets loose and beats his brains out with an iron rod. That's it, folks. Sorry for the spoiler, but that is the entire plot. Of course, the survivor of this hate fest could have gotten away much, much earlier, when she got hold of his big knife but instead of slitting his worthless throat she only cuts his leg, tries to run away, only to stop somewhere and wait for him to come and catch her again. And of course, the other woman who is chained to the other tree could have gotten away too, when she filled a sock with rocks and hit him in the head and knocked him unconscious for a moment but instead of continuing to hit him until he was dead she runs away so that he can of course get up and shoot her in the back with his rifle, yes, the rifle that she could have taken from him in the first place. Yes, of course, because women are stupid, right, according to this movie, and this movie really, really hates women. It doesn't even give the poor survivor the satisfaction of finding her daughter alive at the end. This is nothing but an hour and a half of pure, mindless torture. It is pointless beyond belief.