Review by Peter Syslo
BROKEN (2006 UK ) is a film from the Dimension Extreme label and it is in the vein of torture/survival horror such as the SAW films, WOLF CREEK , and something like FORTRESS (the one with Rachel Ward and the students). The picture does contain some scenes of torture and graphic violence but I didn’t think that it was an unbearably gory film. In fact, it's not as rough as I thought that it would be. It mainly deals with the psychological experience of being held captive and it does convey that quite well. There is not a whole lot of story to the film and it does jump around a bit, but I felt that the film did contain enough shock and ambiguity to keep the viewer interested.
BROKEN is written and directed by Adam Mason and Simon Boyes. The film stars Nadja Brand, Eric Colvin, and Abby Stirling.
The film is about a woman (Brand) who is a single mom. We see her go out on a date and come back home to her young girl. All of a sudden, we see the woman wake up in a wooden casket, realizing that she has been buried alive. This is day 1. The next day (day 2), her casket is pulled from the ground and opened by an outback-looking fellow who is dressed in a duster coat and large-brimmed hat. The woman knows that he is her captor and the burial was only the tip of the iceberg, for her. After being knocked out, she wakes again and finds that she is lashed to a tree, by her neck, and she is balancing her feet on an unstable rock. In some sort of cruel test, the man cut her open and stitched up a razor blade inside the skin of her stomach. The point of the test is that she has to cut open the stitches, retrieve the blade, and cut the rope that is around her neck. In the most gruesome scene of the film, she completes this task and the man continues to keep her captive. But, he keeps her around to clean the camp area, grow food, and tend to his every command – without giving any inclination that he will let her go. To make things worse, she thinks that he killed her daughter or that he is holding her captive, somewhere. The rest of the film is about the interaction between the man and this woman, as she tries to find a way out and as she tries to find out what happened to her daughter.
BROKEN was an interesting example of the captor-captive relationship. At first, the woman is terrified because he is very dominant, but as the story goes on, she starts to become compliant without him demanding it. It's sort of like Stockholm Syndrome, where captives become sympathetic to their captors. The woman does do some things to keep him happy and tries to fool him with kindness, in order to find an escape, but I feel that she begins to do some things just to please him or satisfy him. The woman is brutally tortured and abused by this man, but it seems like she feels a connection with him and she actually seems pleased with the situation herself, at times. I don't know, that's just my speculation, but I think that she enjoyed the dominance and submission, just a tiny bit. You could argue that she needs to keep in good faith with the man, in order to find out what truly happened to her daughter (because they really are out in the middle-of-nowhere, in the forest). But, I gather that she enjoyed parts of the game and she demonstrated a strange affinity for the man.
When you get right down to it, the work is pretty much a torture/survival film. There is the whole psychological aspect of being held captive, but it is the splashes of torture and gore that will draw a horror fan to the film. For me, the opening shots and the razor blade scene (where the woman (Brand) is tied to the tree) are the most hard-hitting. The effects in the film are very realistic and when you see her tearing out the stitches and fishing around inside the wound for the blade, it is enough to make you a little weak in the knees. It is a sadistic scene and you could easily imagine her pain as she digs into her flesh and tries to keep her intestines from bulging out through the wound. I am not exaggerating at all – you really do see all of this. Aside from that, you have some other torture/gore scenes, such as: a tongue being cut out, a leg being broken, gunshot wounds, and multiple beatings to various heads. Truthfully, these scenes are not any worse than what you would see in any SAW film. Though, the razor blade scene does sort of stick with you because you could almost feel it (it's a very effective scene).
Gnawing through the flesh: BROKEN was a good film that provided the viewer with the experience of being held captive and tortured. I liked the fact that the film jumped right into the captivity (seriously, you have about five minutes of foundation and then it gets to the good stuff) but at the same time, the abrupt shift left me wondering about certain things and I would have liked a little explanation. However, I wouldn’t want a whole lot of explanation because I do like the fact that nobody knows why the guy does this to women (that ambiguity is interesting and suspenseful). Other than that, the movie is well shot, bringing the tangibility and beauty of the forest/wilderness straight to the viewer. The acting was great; Colvin was engaging as the sadistic captor because he brought an element of humanity to the guy and you could understand why the woman would second-guess herself when it came to hurting him. As the woman, Brand played a complex role with ease, definitely conveying that character of the victim who becomes the victor, (but wanting to be the victimized in some ways). This film gives the viewer a lot to think about as it is unfolding, and the instances of gore/horror bring an added element to the experience. If you enjoy things like the previous mentioned films and if you enjoy foreign cinema (where there are some loose ends and the good guys/bad guys are not discretely black and white), then you may like it. I give BROKEN a 7/10.