While browsing through the DVDs at my video store, this one caught my eye for three reasons: 1) The cover art closely resembles an awesome French flick called "Inside" ("A l'interieur")-- which I recommend to any extreme horror fan 2) The Dimension EXTREME logo at the top, which has delivered some awesome titles ("Eden Lake", the aforementioned "Inside", and "Storm Warning") 3) The glowing reviews written all over the box which claim it makes "Saw" look like child's play and that it had won several awards at film fests ...<br /><br />Well, let me say, as the box compares it to "Saw", it's as if "Broken" writer/director took EVERYTHING that made "Saw" a quality movie, did the opposite of it, and crafted possibly one of the worst horror films I have ever seen. I can't even qualify as fully seeing it. It was so abhorrent I couldn't watch it passed the 50-minute mark. I doubt I missed anything ground-breaking.<br /><br />The acting is some of the most dreadful, desperate attempts I've ever seen. It's no wonder both the actress (Nadja Brand) who played Hope and the nameless torturer (Eric Colvin) have never had any work after the production of this abomination. Hope is our story's protagonist, and during the oh-so tame "torture" scenes we're supposed to root for her, but literally all she does is whimper and bitch throughout the whole movie, and there is about three minutes of character development before she is captured so we don't even know her character to sympatheize with. Needless to say I was hoping she would die the most brutal way possible. I couldn't even bear to follow through to see if she got away or not. Here's to hoping she was burned alive or something.<br /><br />The antagonist says about 30 words throughout the film, and it's usually two- or three-word demands at Hope to 'wash this' or 'clean that'. I guess he lives in the woods that he holds Hope captive? We don't really know. We basically know nothing at all. Including who he is, why he tortures people, why he chose Hope, how he captured her, what the point of sewing a razor into her stomach was, and why the hell he insists on wearing this ugly hat. It really isn't menacing at all. In fact, there's nothing menacing about him. He is contrived, utterly cheesy, generic and completely baseless. If Hope were to get away in the movie, the only good thing that would come of it would be she would probably kill this guy. It's too bad they both weren't being tortured.<br /><br />The gore that there is is nice, I will give it that. The setting is pretty nice-looking as well. But the camera work is about as lacklustre as the characters' acting so the nice surrounding is rendered pointless.<br /><br />Pointless like this movie.<br /><br />Please, please, PLEASE don't buy this. Don't even rent it. Don't contribute any of your money towards these people so they can think they did a quality job, or even worse, make another film.<br /><br />.5/10