NOOB FILM REVIEW - FRACTURED (2019) directed by Brad Anderson (Netflix)

SYNOPSIS
Ray and Joanne rush Peri, their daughter, to the nearest hospital after she fractures her hand in a fall. However, when the mother-daughter duo disappears, Ray struggles to find them.

REVIEW
A good director knows about the importance of the opening frame to his film. In this case, it shows the images of the scanned human brain in the opening credit as it fades into the main character, Ray (Sam Worthington) in anger and having an argument with his wife while driving.

As the film unfolds, it is clear that these are important element of the story - is everything the audience is seeing is only in Ray's head? Does this driven by his guilt of losing his first wife in a car accident?

The title itself is a great play of semantics taking the audience for a ride while keeping away from being ambiguous. Fractured could also means the state of his relationship. At the end of Act 1, it could also saying something about the injury of his daughter. Later on, the audience are made to related it to the state of mind of Ray himself.

It is soon clear when exactly Ray slipped into hallucination with flashbacks but the director is clever enough to play with shot transition as a strong cue to the more preceptive audiences.

Apart from being a thriller/mystery stated by Netflix, it is more psychological and a straight genre. And the director is cunning enough to deliver a critique towards the Kafkaesque nature of the rural health care and insurance, also the possibility of the human organs trafficking syndicate amongst them.

Near the ending of Act 2, I was imagining that the ending would be Ray waking up from his hallucination in an ICU ward and seeing that his wife and daughter is doing ok. And all his constant resistance with the hospital staff and the police in his dream is a representation of his strong will to regain consciousness.

More with the ending isle shot which is has bright white lighting which might indicate positive ending. He might be meeting with the spirit of his first wife and resolve years of guilt of losing her due to his driving. What a closure that would be.

But the overall gestalt would make it rather inappropriate. The encounter with the first wife might just be a deus-ex-machina moment because there is no visual hint of her in earlier scenes. So as psychological thriller, it ends with a horrific reveal.

This film is about the horror of living in guilt after the lost of a loved ones. My alternate ending might give those who is suffering from it perhaps some hope. Ray's hallucination scenes might have been better if done in a more 'The Sixth Sense' way.

Trailer