The third annual After Dark Horrorfest is now live in 100+ theaters across the country. B-D stringers David Harley and Tim Anderson are off checking out all “8 Films to Die For” and will be bringing you reviews of all of them over the course of the next few days. Today Tim sent in his reviews of Sean Ellis’ The Broken, which can be read beyond the break, and The Butterfly Effect: Revelation, which can be read by clicking here. Don’t forget that all registered users can write reviews for all eight films by finding the film in our movie database – tell other B-D readers what films are worth checking out.

Writer/Director Sean Ellis has some explaining to do. The former photographer and Oscar nominated filmmakers whose last production CASHBACK was a breath of fresh independent air, has decided to follow that feature up with what is already shortlisted for one of the worst horror films of 2009–and it’s only January 10th!

I don’t know what other kind of flicks Sean Ellis watched growing up, but he has definitely seen some Hitchcock in his day. THE BROKEN seems to be Ellis’ version of we might get if an utterly talentless Alfred Hitchcock had interpreted INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS then removed all reason for the invasion, focused only the doppelganger aspect, and ended the film without explaining the motivations of any of the characters at all. Ellis then tries to make sense of his decision to forgo all explanation by allowing Edgar Allen Poe the opportunity to sum of the film’s philosophy in an opening credits quote. I won’t spoil that nugget of pose here, but I will say it’s a cheap cop out from a filmmaker that should have known better. Ellis might have a great visual flair but he’s not quite David Lynch enough to pull off leaving his audience completely perplexed and yet oddly satisfied at the same time.

The plot is simple. Radiologist Gina McVay’s (Lena Headey) life is turned upside down one afternoon when a car passes by on the street driven by a woman who appears to be her. Gina follows the mysterious twin back to her apartment only to discover a photo of herself and her father on the hall table. Racing back home, Gina is distracted and winds up involved in a horrific head-on collision which leaves her physically traumatized as well as emotionally wrecked. She can’t seem to remember what was happening before the accident and all around her the people she loves seem to be changing. Was all of this just a figment of Gina’s imagination and what is going on with her family and friends and all the mirrors that keep breaking around them.

If I tell you the answers to any of those questions, you wouldn’t need to see this movie and that’s probably a good thing. But I suspect that some people–some esoteric people–are going to love this film for the look and the vibe alone. And, I’ll give the film that much. It has a genuine air of dread that permeates the production and it’s gorgeously photographed by Cinematographer Angus Hudson (who also worked on the equally stunning CASHBACK). But that is it. As for plot, and story, and any semblance of logic, the film is a wreck. It’s trying to be clever in its decision to explain nothing. It’s trying to dissect the duality of man. It’s trying to comment on the dark side that lurks inside us all. It’s trying to do something…and it’s failing in every frame. Maybe the film is about how Xanax robs you of your personality? After all, the girl is in therapy and medicated after the crash!

The worst part is that Ellis’ film gave us hope. Hope that the promise of a great Hitchcockian thriller or Kubrickian meditation on antiseptic horror was only an hour and a half away. Then he squandered that hope with a sad-sack production that not only doesn’t answers any of our questions, it fails to even ask them to begin with.

1/5 Skulls