Underrated Movie Review: Broken [2006]

Earlier last week, my uncle had let me borrow a movie by the name of "Broken", and I didn't know what to think of it [I had never heard of it] or what to make of the review by Slasherpool.com on the cover saying "Broken makes SAW look like a children's film". I decided to watch it yesterday, because I had the whole day to myself- and I didn't work until 7 last night.

[actual screenshot from the film]

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Before I begin the actual review, be aware that this movie is based on true events. Also, it had about a million dollars as their budget- and you can tell while watching the film that it's low budget- interesting- but you can certainly tell they had a fairly low budget. [now for my actual thoughts- SPOILERS] I feel very on the fence about this movie because it seemed to keep me busy, but I often got distracted away from the film, as I felt it moved too slow.. also, there is only really 3 characters in the entire film, and it's all shot [for the most part] in one remote forest area in the middle of fucking no where. It starts off with a woman named Hope going on a date with some nice gentleman and by the end of the date, she's headed home to make sure her daughter is safe and asleep and then the screen goes black [I assume that's to mean that Hope went to bed too?] As soon as the screen brightens up again, Hope is found tied to a tree [by her neck with a rope] with a pain in her stomach. She takes what feels like an eternity to lift her shirt ever so slightly just to see what's causing the pain and it turns out she has stitches? [as seen on the DVD cover] Suddenly, a man with a cowboy hat and an accent that sounds like Shooter from Secret Window appears and tells her if she wants to live, she'll cut the stitches off with a pocket knife he lets her use.. Eventually she does, and she digs around the wound [the gore was well enough done for a low budget film] and finds a razor blade. She uses this tiny little razor blade to cut the rope around her neck to release herself, and "The Man" [he's even known as this in the credits.] asks her if she'll continue his game, to which she agrees.

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That's as far as I'm going to go story-wise, because I had trouble following it [not to mention I felt bored through-out so I would leave for a bit while it played in the room], so perhaps I have to re-watch it.. The one thing that did stand out though was the fact that I felt that Hope wasn't the smartest of victims, at one point, she even tries to get the same pocket knife that "The Man" used earlier with a stick to try and cut through thick chains that were around her neck. [as seen below]

 

This is how she wakes up after the screen goes black- she wakes up in a box.. typical.

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Needless to say, the concept of the film was pretty insane, and since it's based on actual events, I feel that makes it even scarier. One thing that is important to be aware of before watching this film though; if you go into hoping that it "makes SAW look like a children's movie", you're going to be very disappointed.. because it really wasn't as intense as they made it sound.. there were scenes that would have made me cringe a little bit, but because of their low budget, it just looked kind of lame, and therefore made the movie itself a little boring. I'll give "The Man" credit though, for an actor I've never seen before, he was pretty damn convincing.. I kind of hope [see what I did there?] to see him in more movies cause he did well as a kidnapping, sadistic man.

[Spoiler Alert; this is AFTER her tongue is cut out..]

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If you happen to end up seeing this movie [or you already have], let me know what you think. Is it actually a masterpiece that I ended up feeling was kind of bland? Or is it really as boring as I felt while watching it?

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