Shattered
After Phyllis Dietrichson, Alex Forrest, Annie Wilkes, Mrs. Mott, Hedy Carlson, and Catherine Tramell, you’d think we’d learn by now.
Cast of Characters:
Chris Decker – Cameron Monaghan
Sebastian – Frank Grillo
Sky – Lilly Krug
Jamie – Sasha Luss
Ronald – John Malkovich
Director – Luis Prieto
Writer – David Loughery
Producer – Claudia Bluemhuber, Veronica Ferres, John Malkovich & Luis Prieto
Distributor – Lionsgate & Grindstone Entertainment Group
Rated R for violence, bloody images, sexual content, nudity, and language throughout.
The Rundown: Despite selling his home security business for a massive sum, Chris Decker (Cameron Monaghan) has this recent good fortune soured by his divorce. Things, however, began to look up for him when he bumps into Sky (Lilly Krug) during a midnight run at the grocery store. Before you can finish saying “red flag”, Chris is already balls deep in her and madly in love. Following an altercation that leaves him seriously injured, Chris invites this woman he just met and barely knows into his home to help as his live-in caretaker.
She strikes me as the type I wouldn’t trust to even check my temperature, but, okay, let her handle your medications and rehab too. Sure, why not?
Once Chris realizes Sky’s true intentions behind their little meet-cute, he finds himself in a desperate fight for survival faster than you can say “well, that was too good to be true”.
Dude, c’mon. The pussy couldn’t have been that good.
Pre-Release Buzz: Shattered follows in the tradition of such psychological/erotic thrillers as Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct, where a man meets a woman that gives obvious “run now and don’t look back” vibes, yet the man can’t help but cave and leap into her panties. Of course, nothing says promising more than a straight-to-video release in the middle of January; however, the film is headlined a talented cast led by Shameless’s Cameron Monaghan, Frank Grillo and Academy Award nominee John Malkovich. On top of that, sitting in the director’s chair is Luis Prieto, who directed 2017’s highly ridiculous yet highly gripping pulp thriller Kidnap starring Academy Award winner Halle Berry.
So maybe there’s hope that this film can offer something more than its perceived straight-to-video stench will lead you to believe.
The Good: The best pulp thrillers rely a lot on magnetic performances from its leads, and while Shattered’s performances are by no means award-level turns like Glenn Close’s Alex Forrest or Kathy Bates’s Annie Wilkes, the cast here goes all-in on what should be a gonzo, twisted premise (more on the “should be” soon). Cameron Monaghan is up to the task in tackling his confined, physically-demanding performance, and newcomer Lilly Krug gives the she-Devil Sky a suitably over-the-top playfulness. It’s John Malkovich, though, that steals the show as Sky’s pervy landlord who takes an interest in Chris’s predicament when he goes Rear Window from his motel and stumbles across Chris’s home.
Malkovich’s appearances are unfortunately brief, but he’s in full Malkovich mode here, and the film is at its most engaging when his trademark eccentricity is on display.
The Bad: The cast comes to play and embraces the pulpy nuttiness, which is quite surprising and I guess a testament to their talent considering the lack of material that’s given to them. Such void of material becomes all the more disappointing in that Shattered is written by David Loughery, who wrote the far superior thriller Lakeview Terrace. What he provides here ranges between insipid and monumentally idiotic.
Well, he did also write Obsessed and The Intruder, so I guess that kinda makes sense.
Loughery makes an attempt to infuse some substance into his script with a brief monologue on the haves and have-nots from a sadly underused Frank Grillo, but that ultimately goes nowhere. One, since it only lasts for just that one monologue, what results is shoehorned social commentary that barely cuts it as a passing reference. Two, Grillo’s commentary is intended to add complexity by posing the idea that Monaghan’s wealthy snob deserves this take down by society’s downtrodden. The problem with that angle is that outside of dropping the ball on his marriage that even he admits he did, Chris never once gives us any impression that he’s this evil dick-bag looking down on the city’s hoi polloi, so whatever point Loughery’s script is trying to make falls completely flat.
Even more disappointing is Luis Prieto’s direction, which here can best be described as a few notches below workmanlike. Yes, the camera is in focus and the sound is clear, but Prieto appears to have no desire to bring any style or tension to the proceedings. Kidnap is hardly a masterpiece but it at least has a sense of urgency that makes it thoroughly entertaining. That much-needed urgency is completely absent here, save one mid-point scene between Malkovich and Monaghan where Monaghan’s pleading for Malkovich to call the cops before the captor returns while Malkovich can’t help but be seemingly oblivious to what’s going on as he blabs on and on about Monaghan’s home. It’s a moment that is both tense and fittingly off-kilter thanks to Malkovich’s Malkovich-ness, and the film as a whole should’ve leaned heavily into that kind of bonkers tone. Such moments that do occur, though, are few and far between, and what we’re mostly left with is a drab film that fails to embrace the craziness.
Keanu Reeves’s Knock Knock is a great example of the type of film this one should be. Say what you want about that movie. I get that it’s divisive, and it’s certainly not perfect, but it sure does embrace its crazy in all the best, most fun ways.
The Ugly: There’s a particular category of narrative that Shattered falls into that I call the “dummy plot”. A dummy plot is a plot that can’t make any progression whatsoever unless the characters make the most preposterously moronic decisions. If they made choices that we’d expect anyone with at least half a functioning brain to make, then the film would end right there before the opening credits finish.
Now, it’s not a deal-breaker entirely for a film to have characters make some dumb decisions. A lot of good, even great, movies have characters that make head-scratching decisions that can be overlooked if the film has enough strengths in other areas to outweigh those particular missteps. But there’s suspending disbelief, and then there’s Shattered which takes the bounds of believability and stretches it all the way out to Pluto. See, this film sets up Chris as not only a home security/identity theft protection expert, but also one that is successful enough to build up a company that is worth millions. That’s not the problem, though, so much as it is the nerve this film has to think its viewers will be stupid enough to buy into that same home security/identity theft protection expert entrusting certain home security details, not to mention his own health and rehabilitation, to a woman he LITERALLY JUST MET A COUPLE DAYS AGO.
But if he did the smart thing, then we wouldn’t have the rest of this movie.
Seriously, Chris, was her pussy really that good?
Consensus: Despite a talented cast doing their best with what they’re given, Shattered “shatters” its opportunity to be intensely fun, pulpy trash by way of its crippling sense of dullness and ineptitude.
Silver Screen Fanatic’s Verdict: I give Shattered a D+ (★½).
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