Nerdly » Frightfest 2024: ‘Broken Bird’ Review

23rd Aug2024

Frightfest 2024: ‘Broken Bird’ Review

by Jim Morazzini

Stars: Rebecca Calder, James Fleet, Sacharissa Claxton, Aleksa Muždeka, Jay Taylor, Robyn McHarry | Written by Joanne Mitchell, Tracey Sheals, Dominic Brunt | Directed by Joanne Mitchell

In keeping with its title, Broken Bird opens with Sibyl (Rebecca Calder; King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, We Are Tourists) preparing a dead avian to be stuffed and mounted. It’s an uncomfortable start to a film full of uncomfortable and disturbing moments.

Apart from her amateur taxidermy, Sibyl also puts her talents to work at a funeral home run by Mr. Thomas (James Fleet; Wolf Manor, The Spy Who Dumped Me). If this isn’t enough to make it clear that she’s not your typical protagonist, her only hobbies seem to be poetry night at the local pub and trips to a museum devoted to Roman funeral practices.

We’re also introduced to Emma (Sacharissa Claxton; The Impact, Avenue 5), a policewoman whose life is unravelling in the wake of her young son Jake’s (Aleksa Muždeka) death and his body’s subsequent disappearance. We soon find out she’s not the only one touched by tragedy. Mr. Thomas has recently lost his wife and, as a child, Sibyl was the only survivor of the car crash that killed her family. All three of them are processing loss and grief in their own ways, and none of those ways are healthy.

And then there is Mark (Jay Taylor; Evie, Ravage) an employee of the museum Sibyl frequents. Happy, seemingly well-adjusted and engaged to Tina (Robyn McHarry; Letters to April). He quickly becomes a focal point in the alternate reality Sybil is constructing for herself.

If you’re waiting for scares, Broken Bird will keep you waiting for quite a long time. It’s a film that works more by way of making the viewer feel uncomfortable and disturbed. Much of the film is a study of its three main characters, with Sibyl getting most of the film’s attention. It’s creepy, very depressing and extremely effective viewing as her already shaky grasp on reality continues to slip. And as the lines between the living and the dead blur for Sibyl, the connections between the characters, living and dead, become clearer.

Broken Bird is the first feature film from director Joanne Mitchell, and it’s based on her short film Sibyl. Dominic Brunt (Evie) extended and expanded the original script by Mitchell and Tracey Sheals. If you’ve seen Lucky McKee’s film May, some of the material here will feel very familiar. Broken Bird might not copy from it, but their stories draw from the same well.

Unfortunately, even if you aren’t familiar with May, it’s still easy to make many of the plot’s connections before they are revealed, although I’m not sure which is actually worse, a shock reveal or the unsettling realization of where things are going. And the film does end on a note that will stay with viewers thanks not just to what is happening, but to how cinematographer Igor Marovic (Dead or Alive, There Has to Be More Than This) shoots it.

While the entire cast does an excellent job, it’s Calder’s performance that stands out and dominates Broken Bird, sometimes to the detriment of the rest of the cast. She makes a distinctly disturbed and rather unlikable seem relatable to the point that you at least feel some sympathy for her, even as the true nature of her acts becomes more obvious. And that might be the film’s greatest strength, making its cast of troubled characters seem so human.

Another in a recent spate of slow-burning psychological horror films, Broken Bird is both disturbing and touching. It may not scare you, but it will creep you out.