[The Broken]
Plot:On a busy street in London, Gina thinks she sees herself drive past in her own car. Stunned by this strange event, Gina follows the mystery woman up to her apartment. From here, events take an eerie turn for the worse until Gina's awareness slides from solid reality into a world that will haunt more than just her nightmares.

Cast:Lena Headey, Richard Jenkins, Asier Newman, Michelle Duncan, Melvil Poupaud.

My Thoughts:Doppleganger Smoppleganger!

Review:Any movie, even a bad one...can set you up for chills and thrills with a plotline which has someone seeing their evil twin riding by one day. I mean if you were walking down the street, and came across your evil twin, wouldn't you freak out? I would. Unfortunately, "The Broken" teases chills, and thrills....but never delivers. The film follows a woman named Gina, who while out and about in the UK, sees a twin of herself drive by.

She follows the woman just to see if she really saw what she saw. This incident coincides with an accident where Gina survives, but upon sharing her story, is quickly shot down by those around her as experience post-accident trauma of some sort. "The Broken" can be compared to "Mirrors" in some ways. The film suggests alot of reasons for this doppleganger mystery, but never sticks with one and follows it through.

It seems to like throwing out theories like the octo-mom loves popping out babies. Before you know it, the film becomes theoretical itself. Not really telling a story, but instead letting you tell it yourself. What reason for this vil twin do you think is afoot here? Pick one. I tihnk while that sort of format may work for some people, for me...I expect a film to tell a story. Not waste 90 minutes with "what ifs?"

Especially 20 minutes into the movie. Lena Headey was also the wrong actress for this movie. Her character doesn't do much to get the viewer intrigued, interested, or excited in any way (despite a bathtub scene). Maybe it was her acting, or maybe ehr boring character. Or maybe the London setting was just way too depressing and gloomy and took away from any bubbly characteristics Headey's character may have offered up.

Either way, watching her and seing her through this ordeal was painfully boring. There's no blood and gore here of epic proportions, which any genre fan should know is expected because it's a doppleganger film. And those aren't notoriously bloody. But there are some freaky moments such as a twin vs. twin shower confrontation where the term "deep throat" takes on a whole new meaning. But the movie tries too hard to be artsy and edgy and moody.

We get many overhead shots of buildings for some reason, and many street shots. I am not sure if this was to set the tone for upcoming scenes, or to make us think evil Gina could be lurking about somewhere. Either way, they don't work very well. I myself wasn't impressed, amused, or anything along those lines. And to top it all off, the character of Gina is surrounded with some extremely and equally boring characters.

A movie is only as good as it's characters, and this film has none. You basically wait around for the twin to show up, and for Headey's character to either run, scream, yell, follow her, attempt to escape, or something along those lines. And considering the twin doesn't pop up on a regular basis, the film is left to it's own devices of building the characters and the story.

And when that happens, well to put it politely....it's nap time my friends. The films final 15 minutes are a decent spike in intensity and action, as well as suspense. But it's too little, too late. It comes to late in the game, and what you have here in a "Broken" (no pun intended) film. "The Broken" is a movie that tries to model itself after other doppleganger films of the past such as "Sisters". But lacks the writing, acting, and overall necessary talent to achieve this goal.

Positives:The initial scene where Gina spots her twin is quite powerful. The ending was suspenseful, as was the shower attack scene

Negatives:Too much attempt at gloom and doom eye candy. Not enough meat on the bone, always promising scares and attempting them for short periods of time. Eventually this formula of empty promises becomes annoying. Especially when mixed with dull and boring characters.

Overall:One out of four stars.





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