THE BRØKEN
(Review)


Now, given that great horror movie moment in Cashback (review in Archive), I was stoked to hear that Sean Ellis was taking on some weird sh!t in his follow-up, The Brøken.
Ask yourself this: what if, one day, you were to see yourself drive past you in your own car? What would you do?
It’s a situation radiologist Gina McVey (Lena Headey) finds herself faced with in The Brøken, and her response to this phenomenon is the lynchpin which drives this excellent and chilling sophomore feature from Ellis.


The questions are obvious: is this actually happening in objective reality, and if so, what is its nature? Or is Gina just plain nutters?
Since The Brøken is the sort of film best seen knowing as little as possible about it beforehand, I won’t go any further beyond saying that though we do see the nature of the bizarre goings-on as the film unspools, there are no real verbal expository bits, which we usually see in Hollywood horror; note how The Ring works out how to properly explain what we’re seeing on the screen, while Ringu pretty much just goes for the atmosphere and the scares, without really belabouring the whys and wherefores.
So, while we do get a sense of the nature and mechanics of the horror here, there is no grand underscoring, which, in this case, makes the end result—as with Ringu—that much more effective.


Ellis reunites with some significant Cashback personnel like Angus Hudson (cinematographer), Scott Thomas* (editor), and Guy Farley (composer), to brilliant effect, presenting us with a tight, elegantly constructed chiller.
Aside from being a great piece of horror cinema, The Brøken also plays—curiously enough—like an indictment of two recent films, both remakes, both reviewed here at the Iguana.
I won’t mention which films those are, of course, so as to keep The Brøken’s central premise a mystery—you’ll know them anyway once you’ve seen what Ellis has achieved here.
Ellis succeeds in doing, with a tremendous and confident flourish, what those films so clearly failed to do: present us with an involving, creepy, and ultimately disconcerting narrative that plays on certain common fears.
Check out The Brøken, and witness the continued growth of writer/director Sean Ellis, a bright new star in the British cinematic firmament.


* It should be noted that Thomas was also the editor on Philip Ridley’s excellent The Reflecting Skin.

Parting shot: Though nominated at Sitges 2008 for Best Film, The Brøken ultimately lost to Jennifer Lynch’s Surveillance. (Hudson, however, did win for Best Cinematography.)

Parting shot 2: It’s interesting to note that Rick Astley (and I’m assuming this is the Rick Astley) is sent off “A Special Thank You” in the end credits.
Hurm…


(The Brøken OS and images courtesy of beyondhollywood.com.)

PLANE
DEAD
(aka FLIGHT
OF THE
LIVING
DEAD)
(Review)

A preliminary word: Plane Dead is set to be released in the U.S. under the title Flight of the Living Dead, a title I much rather prefer since it has that Shaun of the Dead vibe going for it. I thought to myself before watching the film, that if I ended up liking it, I’d refer to it in the review as Flight, and if I was less than ecstatic with it, I’d use Plane Dead.

Review proper: Plane Dead is the story of Concord Air Flight 239, which, in passing through some turbulent weather, is subjected to the outbreak of an engineered virus which kills the infected, then re-animates them as blood-thirsty, flesh-hungry zombies.
Yes, it’s Zombies on a Plane.
Now, I may have had certain reservations about the entertainment value of Snakes on a Plane (this was, after all, still possible in the realm of reality, and in the post-9/11 world, getting some yucks from a planeload of civilians in jeopardy is a tad questionable in my books), but having a zombie outbreak on a commercial airliner was safely in the zone of make-believe, so I had high hopes for this one, hopes that came crashing down soon after take-off.

When the first laugh your film elicits is purely unintentional—cop Truman Burrows (One Life To Live’s David Chisum) bonks himself unconscious, his head gash later leaking blood that looks suspiciously like grape jelly—and the zombies take their damn sweet time to start chowing down, you know you’re in trouble.
Toss some patently fake shots of planes zipping around, some bad sound effects and editing, a completely thrill-free script, a bunch of sad-a$$ zombies, and some uninspired directing by Scott Thomas (producer on TV’s horrible NightMan and the early 90’s X-Men animated series), and you have, hands down, the worst film I’ve seen thus far this year.
This doesn’t even fall into the so-bad-it’s-good category. It’s just “plane” bad. (Sorry.)

It’s sad to see Erick Avari (Heroes’ Papa Suresh) slumming in this bargain basement production, just one other thing we can blame Sylar for. If that maniac hadn’t iced Papa Suresh, then maybe Avari would have been too busy and not been forced to endure the humiliation of playing Dr. Bennett, the slimeball responsible for the virus.
Kevin J. O’Connor’s also here, as the prisoner Burrows is transporting to France. O’Connor was a lot of fun in Stephen Sommers’ neat creature feature Deep Rising. He was annoying though in Sommers’ follow-ups, The Mummy and Van Helsing. He isn’t very funny either in Plane Dead.
The rest of the cast doesn’t fare much better than Averi and O’Connor, and it’s pretty difficult to find anyone who seems to be having fun in this one.

It’s all sad and shoddy, the sort of production where nothing quite masks the low budget it’s all operating on. You can’t even be distracted by good performances or good storytelling.
I’ve mentioned the thrill-free script. Well, it also displays a distinct lack of creativity and flair in getting its story across.
There are a bunch of Pentagon sequences, which serve as nothing so much as awkward expository devices, as the military and government types conveniently discuss the whys and wherefores of the virus.
It is also here among these scenes that the one chillingly serious note in the entire film is played: that if the virus is loose on Flight 239, that it should simply be shot down to prevent the contagion from spreading. It’s a serious note though that gets lost in the achingly bad film it finds itself in.
Not a shred of tension can be found anywhere in Plane Dead’s running time, no sense of danger or anxiety. Just knuckle-headed goings-on and mediocre zombie splatter you’ve all seen before.
And just when you think things can’t get any worse, just after a zombified Papa Suresh sticks his face in the camera, the end credits start scrolling to a horrendous song entitled “Don’t Blink,” written and performed by one Bill Grainer.
Sweet mother of God.

It’s a film like Plane Dead that makes the current zombie cinema craze a bad, bad thing. Ironically, their tag line says it all: this is a flight you really wanna miss.

(Plane Dead OS courtesy of horror-movies.ca.)