Review of The Unbroken (2012) by Jesse O — 25 Mar 2016

The only thing that could be called even remotely good about the film is its twist. And I wouldn't even say that it's good, it's interesting and it changes your perception of everything that came before it.

But this isn't really a horror movie, I mean it's certainly framed like one, but there's nothing really scary or disturbing about this movie. There are films that don't scare me, but I can see and understand how someone else would find them scary.

Not this one. The problem is the fact that the main source of 'horror' in the film is the ghost of this little kid. The problem with that is the fact that he just looks like a normal kid. Some scenes he's got make-up on to make him look ghostlier, other scenes he just looks like his normal self, with a few cuts on his face.

So there's no real consistency and not to mention the fact that the kid himself inspires absolutely nothing. You see him and you don't really react in any way. A movie doesn't have to be scary to be horror, look at the countless slashers in existence.

Again, the movie is certainly framed as horror, but it doesn't really feel like it in execution. Not to mention the fact that it moves at a real slow pace, to the point where if I just decided to stop watching it I wouldn't have felt bad about it.

You know there's something wrong when you think that. And it's not even that the film is awful, I mean it is bad, it's just one that inspires a lot of apathy. You don't care what's going on and you don't really care to find out what's going on.

The acting isn't very good, but at least it's not embarrassingly bad. Well there are a few moments here and there where it's cringe-worthy, but at least they're not many. There's some minimal special effects use, for the glass breaking, and it just looks awful.

It's weird that something so small as that can look so fake with special effects. Then again, if they didn't have the budget for it then they didn't have the budget. I know nothing about special effects, so maybe they really did need a higher budget to make the glass effects actually look remotely close to real.

The pacing leaves a lot to be desired, I just think it's too long of a movie what it is trying to be. There's no reason this shouldn't have been 85 minutes long, at the most. Going close to 100 minutes was clearly a mistake when they didn't have enough interesting material to justify going that long.

Meh, I don't know. This is a bad movie, it didn't make me pull my hair out, but I'll forget this by next week, which is best for all involved. Let's just pretend this never happened.