Shattered Lives

This is a very good low budget horror film. the mood is unsettling, kinda like a David lynch film. The clowns are creepy and effective. There is more going on this film, then just your generic b-movie horror film of teenagers being killed off one by one. I was highly entertained. I looked up the budget on this film, it was something like 70,000 ! and they shot on 35mm. films looks great visually, not sure to credit the director or DP on that one? someone needs to give these filmmakers a real budget, and see what they can come up with.... perhaps a Shattered Lives 2 is on the horizon? I loved the clown characters, and feel there is much more story behind them, where they come from? what motivates them. etc.

You can't spell Shattered Lives with hate , hatred , shatter , sad , and lie . These words , slowly emerging during the opening , pretty much sums up this movie(maybe abit) . The movie opens with blood and gore , making you ax , why ? SL is a mix movie , drama-horror . It has a low-budget feel to it based on my instincts . Not horror-drama , drama is emphasized . It tells of a family gone wrong in two stages , from the main character perspective . When she's young and when she's older(teen) .

Let's start from young . You have a little girl in soon-to-be troubled family . She's a cute little thing and delivers good performance . There will be some horror aspect in terms of demon clowns . They are creepy , scary , and their dialogues are flowery . Then we have the father and mother , average acting . It doesn't take very long for everything to spiral into oblivion ( due to lies) , so the pacing isn't so bad except some family-talks(boring imo) . Silence is well-used to create a depressing atmosphere , you can feel the tension .

The 2nd stage , MC gets older . This 2nd half didn't seem pretty good , maybe due to lack of demon clowns . Tho they do appear .The story wasn't quite strong in this one . This part is allocated from revenge(hatred) . From there , the opening of the movie will make sense .

At the end , you will be served with a grim ending , where everything pretty much shatters apart .

An enjoyable drama mixed with horror movie , an above-average movie .

How this was released beyond a school film department I have no idea, but it has some of the worst acting, sound mixing, music, and editing I've seen in years, and this from someone who loves low-budget schlock as much as art film. Stuck it out to the bitter end: Poignant scenes came off as trite and repetitive, the robo-drawl clowns were far more irritating than creepy, and the delivery was often given with all the passion of a middle school play. Technically and artistically, the film is a complete bomb. With any luck, this is Lindbergh's last film.

I even ended up putting my grocery list together during the incredibly long fake emo scenes toward the end. It sounded like a LiveJournal read aloud, there was just nothing of substance to grip on to.

The height of tackiness is when the director shills his own movies in the reviews! A Carl L. was the only 5-star on Blockbuster, and a lucas_smidth whose only other high rating was for another Carl Lindbergh film just happened to be the highest rater here.

this is a very underrated film. it's not a standard horror film by any means, and I think that's where it gets misunderstood. for example, you have the standard moment in the beginning of the film (the killer wears a gas mask! which I'm surprised aren't used more in this genre) where someone gets killed (nothing special so far)..... but then the film also shows the same scene at the end of the film, but now having watched the film, we see what leads up to the event, and we see it in a new perspective. i.e. seeing a horror movie from the "monsters" point of view. Also, you got to love little clown midgets, that sounds weird, but are wonderfully creepy in a Tim Burton kind of way. highly recommended.

Unfortunately, I can not recommend this film. If there were more money invested into the technical and casting aspects of the movie, I have a feeling it would have been a great movie. However, an awful mess of poor acting, miserable (emphasis on the miserable) audio mixing, and poor direction earn this film a 1. The storyline is quite predictable, however you can't help but feel sorry for Rachel. Yes, the "dolls" are creepy, however the negative aspects described above greatly outweigh any potential there could have been with them (especially the trite robot voices). The only reason I watched past the 15 minute mark was out of sheer morbid curiosity.