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The Broken (2008)
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British writer/director Sean Ellis swaps humour for psychological horror in his slick yet superficial follow-up to 2005 romantic comedy Cashback. Delivering atmosphere rather than innovation, the brooding tale stars an icy Lena Headey as a London radiologist who becomes convinced she's being stalked by her doppelganger. Having glimpsed her mysterious double driving down the street and then confronted her in an off-screen encounter, the traumatised 30-something crashes her car and winds up in an amnesiac state. Slow-drip dread replaces genuine scares, as former photographer Ellis interweaves his own highly stylised vision with a reverential plundering of the work of genre masters from Hitchcock to early Polanski. The languid pacing enhances the precision-crafted tension, while the fractured narrative skilfully mirrors the protagonist's mental disintegration. Ultimately though, the project's technical prowess far outweighs its content, a fact emphasised by the underdeveloped, Invasion of the Body Snatchers-type climax. SF
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Tell us what you think
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Running time
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88min
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Country of origin
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Fr / UK
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Genre
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Horror Thriller
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Alternate title
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The Broken
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Original language
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English
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Screenplay
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Sean Ellis
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Theatrical distributor
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The Works
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UK cinema certificate
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15
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UK cinema release date
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January 2009
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Film certification logos reproduced by kind permission of BBFC |
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