The Broken

From Horrorfest III comes The Broken which could have also been called Invasion of the Body Snatchers: Through the Looking Glass. The movie was atmospherically brilliant, the de-saturated and monochromatic use of colours, a soundtrack made up of dissonant crescendos, but S-L-O-W. I can appreciate a well paced psychological horror, as long as the plot moves in a direction toward a climax.

The main character is Gina, a radiologist with a French boyfriend, a younger brother and an American dad who works for the Embassy in London. Gina plans a surprise birthday for her father who is but two weeks from retirement and nearly sends him to an early grave by scaring the prune juice out of him when they cry their “Surprise!” the party of Gina and her brother, along with their partners sit at the dining table going over the good old days with dear dad when the mirror over the credenza breaks and crashes to the ground.

The next day, Gina wakes and bathes and as she wipes the steam from the mirror, we watch as a doppelganger on the other side does the same. Gina heads off to work and her mirror crashes to the ground and we see that another Gina steps out. It isn’t until she sees herself drive past her in her own car that we begin our cinematic journey into horror, only the writer forgot to add the element of horror to the story, but let’s not talk about that now. Gina follows the car into an apartment building and up to the apartment. We next see Gina driving away when she is struck head on by another car and wakes up in hospital with no memory of the accident.

As she heals, she sees fragments of her last day and a third person view of a super slow-mo crash sequence. She becomes convinced that her boyfriend is not her boyfriend, which was not too difficult to figure out since you see him do nothing but stand expressionless in a sweater vest. After this point, the movie forgets to add tension or terror and even fails to make sense. The twist at the end was the climax of the movie and was so subtle, you might miss it. But you will probably figure it out after 45 minutes and wait 45 minutes more to see how it is unveiled.

I did enjoy the movie even though I felt as though I had already seen it. It was slow and was more of a drama than anything else. I would have liked it more if it had used a few more horror clichés.