The Broken
The Broken
R | 15 November 2008 (USA)
The Broken Trailers

The life of a successful radiologist spirals out of control when she sees the spitting image of herself driving down a London street. While attempting to uncover who the imposter could be, she stumbles into a terrifying mystery that her family and closest friends are somehow involved in, leaving her with no one to trust.

Reviews
AniInterview Sorry, this movie sucks
Taraparain Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.
Quiet Muffin This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.
Married Baby Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?
robertemonaghan If you like slow burn horror movies you may like this more than I did. When I saw it was a English movie I kind thought it would go like this. Hate to be the standard American but not much happens and the dialogue is kind of odd.
Andariel Halo The description given for the movie was essentially A woman suspects she has a doppelganger and all her family and friends are in on it. This led me to believe it'd be a fun movie, horror or drama or sci-fi, either paranormal, mental illness, or some manner of aliens.instead, we get virtually nothing for the first half hour or so except lots of mirrors breaking for seemingly no reason. Then the protagonist Gina sees herself in a car driving down the street, and follows it into a flat. The way the film is shot, it's hard to follow events or characters, so I hadn't even realized she had done all this until later on when she described it all. Then at some point she gets into a car accident and starts having memory problems afterwards.there are a few jumpscare moments, usually involving the mirrors, which are completely out of place with the tone of the rest of the movie, while Gina seeing a therapist about her memory loss, where she suddenly divulges that she thinks her boyfriend Stephan has been replaced with an imposter. Just as I squeal Capgras syndrome, the therapist suggests it might be Capgras syndrome. Except nothing is done with this potential diagnosis as a plot point. She gets an MRI and told it's almost impossible to properly diagnose it, then we suddenly jump to some blonde woman I hadn't even realized until then was in the beginning of the film as part of the surprise party. 58 minutes it took to get to the actual core of the movie's plot as described in the brief summary. And 58 minutes in it sprung a big horror scene that had me laughing at how absurd it looked. The blonde woman is confronted by a doppelganger of herself which reaches into her face, sticking her arm into the woman's mouth and somehow killing her in that way. From there, we get a whole lot of moody scenes, shots of broken glass and broken mirrors, and constant repetitive flashbacks which don't make any sense until later in the film where, around 1 hour and 10 minutes in, it suddenly takes on an "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" vibe, seeming to be going the route of that kind of adaptation before summarily giving it up.Then, we get the big reveal at the end that finally pieces together all the seemingly random scenes and flashbacks, after which the film seems to wan tot go back to its "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" vibe, but by now the movie's over and they've done next to nothing with the concept, new or rehashed. Ultimately it feels like the director didn't know what kind of movie to make, and kept trying out different styles and plot elements, never fully settling on one or the other, and ending up with this disconnect in tone slipping past the editing room and making this film.... not fully intact
vishnu-dileep08 Summary (no spoilers)This movie is about a radiologist Gina Mcvey who organizes a surprise birthday party for her dad inviting her whole family for the function the next day she sees herself driving a car in the street so she decides to follow her to her apartment and there she sees a picture of her and her father in this woman's place. While driving back home she meets with an accident where she loses part of her memory later she thinks Stefan (her boyfriend) is another man. So she decides to investigate what's happening to discover something dark.My Review (no spoilers)The plot was really good but the execution was bleak. Most of the parts in this movie was really confusing and arises many questions in the viewer's mind. I would not blame the actors as it was not their fault it was the way the movie was directed. Actually the ending of this movie was predictable and for supporting the genres horror and thriller not so much. NO I would not recommend people to watch this movie.My Rating 4/10
James For me this is an enjoyable film, I did enjoy it, but I'll confess at the outset that that was for some of the wrong reasons. First of all (hopefully not quite first and foremost), Lena Headey is hot, and for many a viewer that will be enough of itself to keep one watching. Though definitely an aesthetically-pleasing experience for the viewer, the fact that we (he) naturally enough get(s) to see her naked is at some level improper and gratuitous; and all the more so when it is noted that the other leading female character in the film also strips off completely - in the context of a shower scene. We do seem to be heading (if you'll pardon the pun) into Hitchcock territory, though one of the pleasures of this piece of work from British Director Sean Ellis is that we long remain unsure what genre of film this actually is - traditional thriller, modern thriller, sci fi or horror. I don't find anything wrong in that, and indeed took pleasure in it. Equally, a second "easy" reason for liking this film is that it suits the tastes of the lover of films set in London. For Brits like myself (but I think not only), London has a solid, familiar feel about it. Maybe it's not actually friendly or inviting, quite, but it is secure and organised. The perfect setting, therefore, for dystopian and/or disturbing visions from Sherlock Holmes to "A Window in London" to "Children of Men" to "28 Weeks Later" to "V for Vendetta" and you name it. So for this viewer at least, this is a film that ticks quite a few boxes before we even really start with it. Unfortunately, a key element of those traditional thrillers - particularly those made in London or by Brits - is that we have at least a few normal characters, a few normal incidents, a few normal witnesses to hang on to, however weird things get. Investigative journalists, police inspectors, army officers, doctors, priests and so on all used to appear in films like this, not by chance, but because that's what you hang a weird story on, if you want to please those watching. Here everything is portentous (verging on the pretentious), and there is a ready suspicion that "everyone is in on it", a tenet as implausible as it is destabilising and ultimately perhaps unsatisfying. Those who set the viewer up in such a taunting way had better have something really impressive to offer by the time the final credits roll, and perhaps we do indeed have that here. Overall (I believe!) the film does resolve itself into just one of the possible genres, and we do ultimately have the threads of a clear and somehow unified story emerging from all the dark looks and significant comments. But "leave them wanting more" has its limits, before it just becomes mean or pointless. A film that has enough minutes spare to depict both of its leading ladies in the nude can surely afford to give us one solid and satisfying clue as to what has really been happening here, and of course WHY? They could have achieved that using one of several authority figures beyond the main family that seemed to be becoming central to (this aspect of) the story, but then elected to let those characters disappear from the film completely - probably not for mysterious, plot-related reasons, but just because the script petered out! Overall, this is a good-looking and genuinely scary film which is indeed enjoyable, hence there is by no means a negative rating. But - by sacrificing just 5 per cent of its subtlety and nuancing of plot, for the sake of 5% more clear storytelling - it would not have killed itself as an example of the film-maker's art, and would have left this viewer even more pleased with the experience than he actually was.