Compound Fracture

"Compound Fracture" is one of those movies that has a promising and intriguing storyline. A man is summoned by his stepmother and returns home with his girlfriend and nephew. He finds his estranged father obsessed by surveillance systems and mystic symbols and devices and believes he is deranged. But is he? However, the messy screenplay and the poor character development and performances spoil any potential of this film. My Vote is four.

Title (Brazil): "Um Passado Negro" ("A Dark Past")

Movie review:Nice to see Tyler Mane in a role other than his typecast fare. You know him (sorta) as Sabretooth, or Michael Myers, but here Tyler shows he can act, along with write and produce. Michael receives a frantic call from his estranged father to come to his home (a fortress really full of paranoid fears of the supernatural) Here is where Michael (Mane) and his family must confront a spirit(Michaels brother) that took his sisters life. When Michael stumbles onto the murder, he then shoots his brother which leads to a short trip into the afterlife of the angry soul. The movie itself delves into the occult type transition into the afterlife which the family had a knowledge of for generations. Not all go on happy, some stay on a ruthless rampage. The gore is minimal which worked for the film since the characters did a fairly good job acting out a well written screenplay to keep your attention. Far from a classic movie, but will definitely make a fan of horror movies satisfied with a nice story, good images, kills when needed, and all the bells and whistles to bring you back to an age of horror movies that don't need gore and cheap scares to drive the movie. Kudos for the casting director for bringing icons of the horror genre together into this movie (Derrick Mears and Muse Watson, along with Tyler Mane) are very memorable faces from movies and TV I am sure you have seen (kept calling Watson "Franks" LOL ) Overall a great first effort from this team and I look forward to what Mane and Geerlings can bring to the table in the future. Enjoy 5.2/10, IMDb 4.4

Compound Fracture feels like a first outing, and it is. Tyler Mane's new company offers us a passable thriller that ultimately never truly thrills.

The story works. It offers characters with interesting drama and characterization, and a villain with a purpose. There are a few forced moments, where the emotion just shows up instead of being earned organically, but that could be in part to the directing and editing, which I will get to later. The story definitely had potential for thrills, and each character is memorable in their own way, and that is something you don't often find in indie horrors/thrillers, especially first timers like Geerlings.

The acting was weak. Muse Watson, the patriarch with dementia, often felt way over the top as he went in and out of lucidity. Sometimes it felt like dementia, sometimes if felt like he was tired and ready to go home. Tyler Mane will always feel like a giant to me, and it was hard, but not impossible, to see him as a family man. I think his strengths come from playing more fringe characters, less 'everyman'. Alex Saxon was a point of awkwardness for me. He fear noises really drew me out of the moment.

I think, even with the acting, there is potential in the film, but it all fell flat due to the direction/editing. I'm going to group those since they were done by the same guy, Anthony J. Rickert-Epstein. First, a look at his page reveals he is a cinematographer (he was also DP on this film, that's a lot of hats for a feature). And it shows. There were some technical shots going on but usually at the cost of performance and story telling. The film plays slow, and not "slow burn", just slow. The action scenes feel forced. I felt like I was supposed to be scared or thrilled but everything was moving so slow I was usually left just watching, unengaged. There were moments that didn't fit the rest of the film. I can't say it enough: everything felt forced. It felt like they wanted us to be scared, but didn't know how to pull it off, so they just copied a lot of techniques with sound and editing and tried to make it work. And for me, it didn't.

I think it was a good first effort. Hopefully they learn from the mistakes, mostly of letting one man head three departments, and can produce more films.

Compound Fracture isn't a great movie, but it shows that this team has potential, and I look forward to seeing what they come up with next.

After returning to his family home, a man finds the fractured nature of their past has come back to haunt them when a thought-dead ghost returns to seek vengeance against them and must find a way of dealing with the wrathful being.

For the most part this one was just a bland, awfully lame and tired effort that has very little to like about it. The main issue striking this one down is the fact that there's just no horror elements at all within the first hour or so of the film, all taken up with utterly lame drama scenes of the family getting together and showing off the concern for his worsening condition. Not only does that not endear the film to anyone for having to force them to sift through that length of time to get the good parts on-screen but these really make it hard to make us care for what goes on since this one tends to rely on the same old set- up of the father trying to get them aware of something only to make a minor mistake in the facts, either by getting dates or names mixed up, and then have everyone gang up on him like his mental condition is deteriorating and everyone begins yelling at each other. Due to that and the utterly irritating factor of presenting all these scenes as dramas based on his condition there's very little appeal in them anyway before realizing that all they do in the mean-time is drag the pace down to a sluggish, barely-moving crawl that takes forever to get to the point and by then you've lost interest. These are nowhere near interesting or enjoyable since nothing's happening and what's going on anyway doesn't warrant that kind of behavior or reaction possible, and by making all of this reliant on a storyline that is never explained or makes sense compounds matters by keeping us in the dark about the true nature of not only the origins of the curse but also the reasoning behind it. There's a small amount given at the beginning of it being used to tie the family together, but nothing about the true purpose or intent behind it since all it seems to do is allow vengeful ghosts to be able to haunt the area and nothing else. Otherwise, there's not much else here that's worthwhile as the attacks in the house at the end are about all that's good here with the creepiness of his appearance making for a chilling, imposing villain and the action contained to some admittedly impressive supernatural battles involving the use of spells and tomes to completely finish him off. That does bring up some nice gore and kills because of the creepy action, but as this is contained all in the final minutes it's too little too late.

Rated R: Graphic Language, Graphic Violence and supposed scenes of child abuse.

This movie was much better than I expected. When I first started watching this movie, I could not get past the bad acting in the beginning and I had to stop. I went back to it today and I actually pushed past the bad script and poor acting. Tyler Mane was decent, but he could have done better. Muse Watson was essentially the only good actor - no surprise. The color of the movie was actually really strange, but I feel that it added to the aura of the movie. It was a nice change from the movies that are so dark you cannot even see what is happening. It has a really interesting story and an ending I did not expect. For the most part, it was very predictable, but it had some things that caught me off guard. The story was choppy at parts and a bit hard to follow, but it all made sense eventually. It was also a little bloodier than I expected, but I liked it all the same. I was expecting a 4/10, but it was better than that. For a low budget film, this was pretty decent; much better than ones I've seen before.

In short, poor acting, OK script, interesting story, good plot, odd coloration (but it works), and it has a few good scares.

Check it out if you're just looking for something to watch that you've never seen before. It's not a MUST SEE, but it's alright.