Before I say anything else, I’m still trying to figure out why the name of this film is Fractured. I’ve done my best to put together all the aspects of this movie to see whether or not the title comes from something literal or figurative, and I simply cannot. Goddammit, I’m usually so good at this!

If it has something to do with putting pieces together, then that might make sense–the entirety of Fractured is structured out of a twist midway through the film, where the viewer gains a different perspective on what they just saw 40 minutes prior. But the viewer isn’t stupid and knows what the twist will mean as soon as it’s recognized. They certainly don’t need to sit through the entire first half of the film all over again.

Fractured starts fairly slow, with another age-old tale of a bickering young couple named Rebecca (April Pearson) and Michael (Karl Davies), on their way to a getaway house in the middle of bum-fuck-nowhere. After revealing far too much about their affinity for BDSM, they eventually find themselves creeped out and are convinced someone is watching them. After a rather disturbing series of events, we see a different side of the story so far that eventually pieces together (most of) the details, and we see the hunters become the hunted. I still had a number of questions concerning the tying up of loose ends (was that why they were into bondage?), but at the risk of spoiling it, I will allow you to ask your own questions upon viewing.

Cinematically, the shots are well-composed and clearly inspired by the voyeuristic scenes in Hitchcock’s work and later replicated in other home invasion films; they definitely create an unsettling atmosphere and a realistic POV that gives Rebecca and Michael a good reason to feel they’re being spied on. But the suspense, for both halves of the film, tends to fall flat.

The unfortunate fact is that the immediate moment you discover the twist is the only truly compelling part of the film that makes you go “wait, what?”. The remaining 40 minutes just continues to follow around the same few unlikeable millennials, because A.) the characters did not have the opportunity to be developed, or B.) we never actually liked them in the first place.

Fractured really does have an interesting premise. And it probably would have worked better as a short film, as it feels as though it was forced into a padded runtime.