Broken Skull (AKA Headcrusher)
This is my first contribution to the Vampire Blog-A-Thon, yet I was misled by the Bite Night package. This is not about vampires - I'm not sure what the actual possession is in it, but it doesn't have any throat-sucking action. Sorry for all of those who were expecting a vampire movie - just pretend like this movie is about vamps.
Broken Skull was directed and written by Ricardo Islas, and is a very low-budget effort at a horror movie. In it, a wife (Stephanie Beaton, who I researched and is supposedly a B-movie scream queen, although I've never heard of her) has been cheating on her mobster husband with another man, and now that mobster, Mr. White (Dominic Capone) has her and her cheating boyfriend murdered. Mrs. White is hung, but the cheating boyfriend has his head crushed! After 20 years, some union construction workers are renovating the building where the mobsters buried the bodies in the walls, and after a worker finds the crushed skull, strange murders begin happening, apparently because of this vengeful spirit. The worker commits suicide and comes back to life, and his daughter, Sol (Paola Valdes) needs to know the answers of his death. She enlists the help of a recently-fired construction worker, where she falls in love at first sight, and brings her friends along to the construction site to uncover the mystery.
Now I'm taking into consideration the low budget of the movie, because it's shot on video and has a pretty minimal score, the direction's not great, and the actors seem to be amateurs at best. The special effects are done generally well, since I'm assuming that the movie was made from the pocket change of everyone involved.
But the major drawback of this film is the story. The beginning of the movie starts off alright, although a little cliched, but as we begin to be introduced to the numerous characters the film offers up, two things dilute the entrances. One is that the characters are quite cookie-cutter, stereotypical, and most of all, boring. The Italian mobster is actually shown eating some spaghetti in one scene! The Asian girl works at a karate gym. The pothead is a douchebag. It doesn't seem like much thought was put into fleshing out realistic characters, and the film doesn't make an effort to shed some light on these flat protagonists. Second, we are introduced to so many characters so quickly that we don't get the chance to feel for them, know them, care about them, and barely even know their names. It's also confusing as to who is the main protagonist, and after about a half hour of meandering, we finally come to the conclusion that we're supposed to be rooting for Sol - kind of. It's not really clear.
So now that we don't really have a care for any of the characters, and they start dying, does the movie really have an emotional impact? Not really. Many of the deaths are of people who the audience is introduced to only for the sake of killing them off. There's no emotional despair at the deaths, and therefore not really a point to them except for entertainment with gore.
The characters aren't the only part of the story that suffers. More importantly, the plot doesn't seem to go anywhere. Why does Sol want to look at the place where her father died? What is she looking for? And what will they do when they find it? The ruse to go back to the basement of the building where Sol's father died just feels like an easy way to trap 5 people in a building with a possessed dead man. There's just not enough meaningful plot to warrant 75 minutes of movie. Most of the footage shown is really not too important to the main idea of the film.
There's also some confusion with what the meaning of the possessed father is. So the spirit of the guy with the broken skull inhabits the dead body of Sol's father. I understand that, to a point, and the spirit wants revenge. Check. But why kill innocent people for the fun of it? No check. And the body of Mrs. White is still preserved in the wall, and her face is blue and her tongue is sticking out and it seems as though she has something to do with the killings. But what? The film keeps showing the audience her creepy face, but what does it have to do with anything? Don't leave us hanging.
I do have to say, though, that the gore is pretty well done for the most part, and the creepiest scene is the ending one, where Mrs. White's face is extending out of the broken wall towards Sol. That got me for some reason. Stephanie Beaton sure looked freaky.
Overall, Broken Skull is a good attempt at a slasher movie, but its plot is just too bullet-ridden to warrant multiple watchings. The low budget doesn't detract that much from the look and feel, but the confusing, boring characters and misguided story make it feel like the VIEWER'S head is being crushed, and let me tell you, it don't feel so good.
