A young woman wakes, covered in blood, in a coffin.  She manages to escape, only to be knocked out by her tormentor (Eric Colvin). She regains consciousness to find herself hanging by her neck from a tree.  She painfully pulls at the stitches of a freshly sewn cut on her belly and frantically fishes inside her gut until she finds a razor blade with which she tries to cut herself down.

Two weeks later, Hope (Nadja Brand), an attractive young mother, finds herself in exactly the same situation.  She too escapes the coffin and finds the blood soaked teddy bear of her 6 year old daughter nearby.  After surviving her tree ordeal, Hope is taken to a forest clearing where her abductor keeps her as his slave.  She endures harrowing ordeals at the hands of the psychopathic forest dweller, with just the dwindling belief that her daughter may still be alive to keep her going. As hope fades, her thoughts turn to revenge.

Broken is a British independent film with a tiny cast, very little dialogue and set almost entirely in woodland.  It hardly sounds like a recipe for a classic, but Simon Boyes and Adam Mason have created a stunning, intelligent modern thriller. They don't bother trying to explain why or how, they just throw you into the  hunter's lair and force you to watch him play with his prey. The cinematography is magnificent, giving the arboreal setting a life of it's own. The players in this wildwood drama raise it to another level. Nadja Brand goes way beyond what we've come to expect from an actor in an Indie film,  her performance is outstanding, equal to anything seen recently in mega-budget movies. She has the ability to convey a myriad of emotions, from panic and desperation to coyness and poignant despair. Eric Colvin also performs well in an extremely difficult role. His character, of whom we are told nothing of his background, is far from your typical bad guy. He's mad of course, and has some extremely nasty habits, but he also has a strange sensitivity and lapses into child-like states. He is however one mean fucker when he gets going.

Broken is wonderfully paced, possibly a little slow for those weaned on formulaic Hollywood horror, but its brooding menace and clever curve balls thrown at you every time you think you know what's going to happen next, captivated me from the harrowing opening shots to the vicious finale. Even when it's all over, and you sit there slightly shell shocked, the strangest song ever plays over the credits . Genius.

Broken has come along at a potentially very good time, with brutal (for the mainstream) films like Hostel and The Hills Have Eyes remake doing well at the box office. With the right exposure, this film could be up there with them. It deserves to be, it is in my opinion a better film than the both of them.

Broken is Saw for grown-ups. A precocious, arrogant piece of independent cinema that puts most modern horror to shame. Superb.  S.J.T.

Broken.  2006

Directed by Simon Boyes and Adam Mason

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