{"id":22830,"date":"2016-10-19T03:26:29","date_gmt":"2016-10-19T07:26:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=22830"},"modified":"2016-10-19T03:36:14","modified_gmt":"2016-10-19T07:36:14","slug":"broken-2016-brooklyn-horror-film-festival-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2016\/10\/19\/broken-2016-brooklyn-horror-film-festival-2016\/","title":{"rendered":"Broken (2016) [Brooklyn Horror Film Festival 2016]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"broken-poster\"<\/a>Evie is trying to make her life better by taking a job taking care of a tetraplegic, John, who can be a disagreeable handful.\u00a0 As she cares for him and attempts to bond with him somewhat, her past comes popping back up. Written by Shaun Robert Smith and co-writer Craig Conway and directed by Shaun Robert Smith, Broken is as much about John\u2019s battle to regain some happiness after becoming tetraplegic and not giving up on life as it is about Evie trying to help him become more independent as she attempts to redo her life and forget her past.\u00a0 Evie is the definite lead, but John\u2019s story is about as important.<\/p>\n

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Both of their characters are layered and these layers are revealed one by one as they get to know each other and their own limits.\u00a0 The characters created here are not fully loveable but they are trying to be better.\u00a0 The characters here make the entire film work as everything revolves around the two leads, the people in their lives, and what they are trying to do.\u00a0 The writing of the characters is what makes them people that one wants to watch and the developments in the story are surprising and they work with the story itself.\u00a0 There is a development that requires a bit of a jump or leap of faith, but it still works. The cast for these leads is important as they support some much of the movie and their performances influence the how the characters come across.<\/p>\n

In the part of Evie, Morjana Alaoui starts off as an annoyed woman doing what she can to survive and eventually she lets John, and the audience, into her past with devastating effects on herself and the listener.\u00a0 Alaoui plays this part with the right amount of restraint until it\u2019s time to let everything go.\u00a0 Her performance is what keeps the viewer watching along with Mel Raido as John.\u00a0 He gives his character a sadness and vulnerability along with his anger and grief over his past way of life.\u00a0 His character comes off as a pissed off disabled man but there is more to him, shown through the performance by Raido.<\/p>\n

The film takes place almost entirely in one house, the house where John lives.\u00a0 The place adds to the stress of the situation with Evie living above from John as he cannot make it up the stairs anymore.\u00a0 The house itself is simple and looks like many houses in the UK, but it is used to create a separation between Evie\u2019s life and John\u2019s.\u00a0 It also serves to show how much John needs Evie.\u00a0 The house is shot in a way that it looks almost claustrophobic at times, with images framed by cinematography by Kyle Heslop.\u00a0 His images add a lot to the story and the feelings of the film.<\/p>\n

Broken is a thriller with some horror elements, it takes a long time to get really going but the build-up is worth it when it really hits its stride.\u00a0 The last part of the film may make a few go \u201cHoly shit!\u201d as the action really goes into high gear and the revelations lead to the an interesting and surprising last act.\u00a0 The writing lends itself to this ending even though it may not seem like so at first.\u00a0 The acting sells the action and makes it make more sense.\u00a0 The film is a slow burn with a sudden change of pace that is entertaining and works once it\u2019s all said and done.<\/p>\n

Brooklyn<\/strong> Horror Film Festival had its first edition from October 14th<\/sup> through October 16th<\/sup>, 2016.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Evie is trying to make her life better by taking a job taking care of a tetraplegic, John, who can be a disagreeable handful.\u00a0 As she cares for him and attempts to bond with him somewhat, her past comes popping back up. Written by Shaun Robert Smith and co-writer Craig Conway and directed by Shaun […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,12],"tags":[302,367,1087],"class_list":["post-22830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-halloween-horror-month","category-movie-reviews","tag-drama","tag-foreign","tag-thriller"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22830"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22830\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22832,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22830\/revisions\/22832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}