Fractured (2019)

October 12, 2019 5:57 AM

Driving cross-country, Ray and his wife and daughter stop at a highway rest area where his daughter falls and breaks her arm. After a frantic rush to the hospital and a clash with the check-in nurse, Ray is finally able to get her to a doctor. While the wife and daughter go downstairs for an MRI, Ray, exhausted, passes out in a chair in the lobby. Upon waking up, they have no record or knowledge of Ray's family ever being checked in. A Netflix original film from director Brad Anderson (Session 9, Transsiberian).
posted by DirtyOldTown (10 comments total)

I'm posting this now and hope to see this soon. Brad Anderson's work varies from half-baked (Vanishing on 7th Street) to highly proficient but anonymous (many, many episodes of Fringe) to positively stellar (Session 9, Transsiberian). So there's no telling what to expect.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:00 AM on October 12, 2019 [2 favorites]

(I don't mean the above as a dig. My guess is that Anderson is just doing his job as a journeyman director, and his output varies more by the quality/type of the source material. He's clearly highly skilled.)
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:12 AM on October 12, 2019

The basic idea doesn't seem particularly original, though? Bunny Lake Is Missing, The Vanishing (1988), Flightplan.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:55 AM on October 12, 2019

It can still be done unexpectedly, though - The Forgotten was a slightly different take on the idea. I haven't seen this yet - probably later this weekend.
posted by rmd1023 at 1:23 PM on October 12, 2019

Watched it today; it was a kind of interesting experience, as there's a dead obvious twist contained inside another dead obvious twist, and I was distracted enough by them telegraphing twist #1 that I was actually legitimately surprised when they doubled down on twist #2.

It's hard to get into this and stay relatively spoiler-free, but it's a competent piece of work; I don't think much of Sam Worthington but he tries his very best, and mentally reviewing it (I'm not gonna rewatch it) I think the twists hold together okay.

Not one for the ages, but I don't regret making time for it. Fails the Bechdel and pretty much all the other tests, but my expectations for Netflix original movies are kind of diminishing returns at this point.
posted by Shepherd at 8:35 PM on October 12, 2019 [2 favorites]

Fanfare discussions are not required to be spoiler free. I’d be interested in hearing about what you thought about it.
posted by skewed at 8:40 PM on October 12, 2019 [1 favorite]

It's like a nesting egg of workmanlike but ham-handed telegraphed plots.

If it had been just one -- the "dad's obviously tightly wound, pretty evident Sixth Sense style 'he's the only person who talks to anybody else' unreliable-narrator story", or the "spooky piano music pointed questions about organ donation creepy doctors and orderlies organ harvesting story", I would have been singularly unimpressed -- but the more is more thing actually kind of won me over.

I wasn't that invested in it -- it was a good side-screen-on-an-iPad experience while I made baked beans -- but there was enough credible shuttling back and forth from "dad's insane!" "No, it's a murder hospital!" "No, wait, he probably is bananas!" "Hang on, maybe it really is a murder hospital!" "Oh, wait, he's nuts!" that I had a pretty good time in the back half.

I can legitimately see how somebody else might have absolutely hated it, but it felt like good/fun B-movie fare for while I was doing something else.
posted by Shepherd at 7:40 AM on October 13, 2019 [2 favorites]

I'm halfway through it at the moment. (I stopped when my wife said "oh! I meant to mention that - I wanted to watch that with you," so we'll pick it up from the beginning after we've made dinner.)

They're laying it on pretty thick, and there's plenty of "oh, which way are they going with this" to choose from. (Sixth Sense? Jacob's Ladder? Secret organ harvesting? Any of several other possibilities that come to mind?)
posted by rmd1023 at 3:28 PM on October 13, 2019

They're laying it on pretty thick

I'm going to be peeved if this turns out to be Flightplan (ala Sixth Sense?) But For Organs Instead Of Money (Subtitle: The Organs Are For Money).

But I guess Netflix wins either way.
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 5:23 PM on October 13, 2019

Finished it. It felt very "Shutter Island" for a while, and I guess there was a good reason for that. I liked the shrink. The final revelation of the twist wasn't a big surprise, but was satisfactorily done. Chekov's rebar spike did its thing. I really liked the shift of Ray's expression in the last shot.

I'm honestly surprised it wasn't him having a death experience - his smile at the military commercial in the waiting room made me speculating that maybe he was deployed military somewhere and having a death experience, but after no other crumbs in that direction I figured he was maybe in a drunk driving accident. Going into the waiting room to wait for Abby was extra levels of "dead former spouse coming to take you to the afterlife"

Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug - Flightplan ended up annoying the hell out of me. It is one of those 'unfolding conspiracy' movies where nothing makes sense if you try to explain it in terms of what the bad guys were planning (like a heist film) rather than "here's an unfolding mysterious plot, drop by drop." I'm really tired of "super competent omniscient perfect conspiracy groups" in fiction, though, so it was probably extra annoying for me than it might've been when I was less done with those. (More of an issue in serial media where a show's concept might have a mystery sustained for dozens of episodes with some relevatory crumbs for the audience occasionally.)
posted by rmd1023 at 1:33 AM on October 14, 2019