3 out of 5 stars
“Fractured” is a new Netflix release that has been heavily anticipated by fans on social media. The 1 hour, 40 minute long psychological thriller was released to Netflix on Oct.11, and doesn’t live up to its hype — or the sheer amount of memes it spurred. Although shocking, thrilling and gripping, “Fractured” was a film unlike anything that was advertised or showcased to be by Netflix. Even the trailer is deceiving and makes a lot more sense than the actual film.
The movie was originally derived from a screenplay written by Alan B. McElroy and was first premiered at Fantastic Fest, an annual film festival in Austin, Texas, on Sept. 22. The film is about a man named Roy Monroe, played by Sam Worthington, who is driving home from visiting his family over Thanksgiving. His young daughter Perri, played by Lucy Capri, is in the car along with Roy and his wife Joanne, played by Lily Rabe. Things take a turn when the family has to stop at a dilapidated rest stop for Perri to go to the bathroom, and Perri and Roy both take a hard fall into a huge construction site. From there, terror unfolds as Roy rushes his family to the hospital and is sitting in the waiting room for hours.
Things ramp up when his daughter and wife are nowhere to be found after hours of waiting, and Roy starts to get agitated. The film winds through an array of chaotic events as Roy starts to realize that both his wife and daughter have gone missing in the hospital. There are so many plot twists and unforeseen events that everything gets jumbled and becomes very hard to follow. Roy, despite his mania and hysteria, attempts to talk to doctors and employees at the hospital, who seem to remember him coming in by himself to be treated for a head injury.
Roy stops being able to recall what actually happened and what didn’t, which makes for a very unreliable main character in the film. Once the police get involved, the stakes increase alongside Roy’s insanity. The concept of the film is very interesting, jarring and high-stakes, but the actual execution of the film was less than stellar and not up to par with such an interesting idea for a movie.
The thriller was too jumbled with events and emotions from Roy to even pay attention to the actual mystery that needed to be solved. Roy’s role as the narrator took us on a wild ride, and I found myself almost out of breath as I was forced to run through the hospital in a state of mania and panic with him.
The acting was very well done, but the scene changes and clips that were edited together were not as coherent as they could have been. I found myself wishing I was able to focus more on the story and on trying to guess how the ending would turn out instead of how crazy Roy was acting or what was going on in each moment. The ending was also very expected and easy to predict, which does not usually produce good reviews from a psychological thriller that tells fans to expect the unexpected.
Overall, this movie was worth watching, but only so you could talk about how crazy it was with your friends and try to piece together what actually happened.
