Broken Reviews

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Shocking! & not in a good way.

Whoever wrote this must have broke their pen & scribbled the script with some crayons. A woman held hostage in some woods (handily lit up at night with added smoke machine effects) by a nutter who seems about as scary as Mr Bean.

There are some brutal scenes but they are more screw your face up than turn the lights back on. The pace is slow & I've seen better acting in porn movies. I don't get the Saw comparison either. The only task I saw her undertaking was how to keep his garden filled with some nice veg. No, really!

Dull all the way, the only good bit is near the end where she beats his head in with a pipe, which by the end you'll want to do to the entire cast & crew for wasting your time. Rubbish!

[Highly rated reviewer]

Sprained but not quite Broken

The trailer of this looked amazing and maybe got my hopes too high for this low budget film.

The film has a good premise and throws you into an interesting sitiuation. However it just never really got into its stride. My main issue is that the 'bad guy' had no on screen presence and simply wasnt scary. He came across as a childrens BBC version of the killer in 'Wolf Creek'.

Yeah the film was low budget but never really felt it apart from some of the acting (not all). The special effects were awesome and the cinematography really good. Throughout you just get the feeling that these guys just had no idea the direction they wanted to take the film in so it comes across a bit diluted.

The best part of this DVD is the making of section which i found really insightful and even though i didnt like the film that much, i gained huge respect for the makers.

[Highly rated reviewer]

How SAW could be.

Broken is a low budget British horror in a similar style to SAW, the basic premese is that a women is kidnapped and forced to endure various tasks before she is allowed to live with her captore. The opening 20 minutes are pretty gorey and have some great special effects. By the end of the film though you do kind of wonder why she was kidnapped though and how the captore abducted her. Especially as he lives in the woods.

As a whole it's not a bad film, the opening minutes are hard going and pretty nasty.

Broken

The tension never lets up in this brilliantly atmospheric and chilling movie. The writing is tight and the low-budget grittiness of the production seems to add to the viewer's sense of the victim's ordeal.

Overall, if you like a disturbing yet intelligent watch with a dollop of gore and no hope of a happy ending then this is for you.

[Highly rated reviewer]

Truly nasty horror let down by poor script and characterisation

I feel i must take issue with the majority of the reviews here. Broken is in many ways a very well made film. It is well acted despite the numerous comments to the contrary. For a low budget parochial film the production values are very good( The gore scenes are stomach churningly realistic) and in many ways -the dissonant soundtrack(Very 'Seven') , the graphics , the whole feel of the film -it resembles a major studio effort.

Where it really fails is in the script. This is an extremely nasty horror film but a nasty horror film that has no empirical basis for the sadistic deeds carried out comes across as a virulent porn violence and when the victims are exclusively women it also carries a whiff of misogyny.

The very simple premise is that single parent Hope( Nadja Braid) is abducted by an unnamed man (Eric Colvin) who looks like he wants to live on the American frontier( Big hat, windcheater)although the most terrifying thing about him is his haircut. He puts her through a series of cruel tasks the criteria seeming to be how badly she wants to stay alive though we don,t know because the motivation behind the mans methods is never explored. The rotting corpse hanging from a tree lets Hope know that she isn’t the first to suffer this mans brutality( An opening prologue shows him despatching another victim) but Hope is determined to fight in order to find out what has happened to her daughter.

He alternates between tenderness and extreme violence- when she tries to escape he shatters her leg- and their existence becomes a furtive game of cat and mouse. The arrival of another victim changes the dynamic and it’s her eventual bid for freedom that instigates a conclusion that is in one way satisfying but in another way though commendably downbeat seems to revel in the visceral sadism of the narrative.

Supposedly based on a true story ( Can’t say I’ve ever heard of anything like this happening in the U.K.) Writers and directors Siomn Boyes and Adam Mason have made a film that revels in the cruel misdeeds of an evil man and in that they do a sound job. Where they fail is in the characterisation and the script. Why is this man obsessed by this victims struggles? Why is he so keen for Hope to tend her little garden ? Why does he live in the woods? None of these, i would say important factors are broached , and the galling thing is they could have been quite easily. 'Hostel' for instance is a very nasty horror film too but is also making a point about American imperialism and rampant capitalism. Broken doesn’t seem to be making much of a point about anything other than that horrible people like doing horrible things. I would suggest we get enough of that in everyday life without film makers rubbing our noses in the entrails of it all.

no.

switched it off after about 30mins

was boring

enjoyed film

i enjoyed this film,it may have been cheap to make but kept you gripped and gory bits were fab (if a bit stomach turning).great recommended!!

This is a nasty piece of work

Having viewed pretty much all the genres of horror film and been comfortable with the large majority of them, this one sits outside anything I've ever seen.

I therefore don't agree with the majority of reviews that I've read about this film - it is simply a nasty piece of work, and has no redeeming features whatsoever.

It has no point, no plot, and is seriously gratuitous and unpleasant.

As for 'being based on a true story', what a load of rubbish.

Who in their right mind would behave like this? Sorry, someone has seriously lost the plot, as well as leaving it out altogether.

Now my dvd player is broken!

All in all, not a very good movie.

Relying on cheap shocks and gore, with no hint of an actual storyline, this movie was a real let down. It may be comparable to Saw and Hostel in premise, but in execution it's ghastly-- and not in the good way for a horror movie.

Without going into detail, there are some scenes so blatantly unrealistic you just want to scream, and it casts some serious doubts on whether the writers even have a rudimentary knowledge of human anatomy and illness.

This kind of 'shocking' hyperbole makes for bad movies most of the time, but with a good plot and decent acting, it can be tolerable. However, this movie lacks any essence of a true plot, and the acting is probably the most horrifying part.

And there is also a deep misogynistic element to this movie, which, given the truly horrifying rates of violence against women in society, is inappropriate, to say the least.

I'm deeply disappointed I rented this movie. I'd advise fans of this genre, whom may enjoy the Saw series, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Wolf Creek, The Hills Have eyes (remakes) and others to just stay away. Check out other movies, or wait for the new Saw one.

Customer Review

If you want to waste 90 minutes of your life then go ahead and watch this film. Story line - there was none, it showed as low budget which is never a good start, acting was pants.