Fractured

Sam Worthington, Lily Rabe,

Lucy Capri, Stephen Tobolowsky

"Finding His family Means Facing the Truth"

NETFLIX

With this Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ) aka Lockdown passing the one month mark in my neck of the woods, Netflix is now my best friend! =)

With a wide variety of genres available, one can get quickly overwhelmed. Normally, I stick to stand up comedies for a laugh here ... a laugh there. Often though, I end up falling asleep with earphones and laptop still on. Until the hubby wakes me up so he can switch off the lights.

But this movie kept me up, my eyes wide glued to the laptop screen because I had to put my thinking hat on to get into the main character's  frame of mind. "Fractured" not to be mistaken for "Fracture" (the Anthony Hopkins, Ryan Gosling starrer) is a suspense thriller of one family's road trip, gone terribly wrong. 

Ray Monroe (Sam Worthington) and his wife Joanne and daughter Peri are on their way home after Thanksgiving. They stop by a gas station to refuel, and buy some snacks. Peri, his 6 year old daughter goes off wandering and accidentally falls into a construction pit. Frantically, they rush to a hospital's ER to have Peri examined. She needs surgery so she is taken to the OR. From sheer exhaustion, Ray falls asleep in the waiting room. Upon awakening, he inquires about his injured daughter.

Yet no one in the hospital knows where she is. In fact, they claim there isn't any patient by that name. In his stupor, he roams the halls of the hospital searching for his family. In the end, causing so much chaotic disruption, it affected the normal operations of the facility. 

This part evolves into a maudlin tale of a father desperate to know what really happened to his wife and daughter. It morphs into a who.is.indeed.telling.the.truth? sequence of events. Filmed in a mostly dim and dreamlike setting, it is hard to tell what is really happening with the doctors,  and police officers hovering over the already very confused and distraught Ray.

At this point, I was still fully invested in Ray's plight. The desperation and frustration visibly imbibed in his whole being. From sweating, his walking almost running pace, the fear etched on his troubled face. Until the very last scene, when the whole family is back in the car, all smiles, and singing with his daughter in the backseat, none the worse for wear.

Or are they?

It is in this  scene where the truth shockingly unfolds. Specifically in the back seat and the trunk of the vehicle Ray is driving on the highway.

The film is mostly average in nature. From the acting - almost all the scenes are focused on Sam Worthington who I first saw in James Cameron's "Avatar". I find it strange, that he has not really attained film star status despite appearing in one of the most highest grossing blockbusters of all time. To the cinematography which had mostly dim and dreary shots - the bleak climate, the menacing  construction pit complete with an aggressive barking dog to the muddled hospital scenes.

But if there is one thing I'd say going for "Fractured" which more or less captured the audience's my short attention span is the twist towards the end, in the car scene when everything seemed to have calmed down. Just when you finally catch your breath from all that frenzy in the hospital, boom it hits you!

I have to admit I didn't see it coming. Maybe, I was sleepy even though I did not doze off. Or perhaps all the mayhem in the hospital scenes masked some or several clues which would have offered me a better grasp of the eerie ending. Either way, the twist(ed) conclusion is the only + point I can confer to this psychological thriller/drama.