Horrorfest III: The Broken: Long Cracked and Bloody

Has anyone told you they've seen someone who looked like you walking down the street, or that you look like the parking attendant or someone famous? Well congratulations you're fucking doomed! The Doppelganger concept is nothing new. Two weeks before he was shot Abraham Lincoln was rumored to have seen his own shifty shadow riding a horse past his home. It was reported that John Donne saw his wife double in Paris on the night of his daughter's stillbirth. Then there was the creepy, but under appreciated Keifer Sutherland film Mirrors. The Broken tries to explain the idea of a ominous double without explain anything at all. This Stephen Ellis film is as sneaky as the innocuous back rub which morphs into accidental groping then into a full blown tongue knotting, that mutates into the awkward buddy hump; this movie has its hand down your pants before you realize that you've had too much to drink. Only problem is it's just too long. The climax, while explosive and messy, just doesn't measure up. If you want blood look to the rest of the the movies in the Horrorfest III collection. The movie is a tease at first, with heavy shadowed black and blues for ominous hallway scenes and black and burnished brown-reds to highlight the feeling of home and hearth during the pivotal birthday scene; a scene filled with the kind of chit chat that leaves you hoping the pay off will be immediate and gruesome. There are tons of moments like this but the ambiguity works...sort of. The inclusion of The Broken in Horrorfest is like hiring Uma Thurman to work at a meat packing plant: she comes in with really good intentions but eventually she'll just look like a model covered in entrails. The plot revolves around the events that occur after a car crash where the main character finds herself unable to remember the specifics but recalls seeing herself walking down the street when the crash occurs. What follows is a good story that's convoluted but and murky. The murk helps the suspense for a while but then it just gets on your nerves. The car crash is shown about three times i n s l o w m o t i o n. There are a lot of moments of dead space and "Why the fucks" but there is a really well developed story that could work well if the idea premise was handle a little better.