Beaten (2005)

It was hard to make any sort of connection to any of the characters in this film. Everyone from Robson Greene’s Michael to Saira Todd’s Stephanie and each and every character in between was so negative that I truly struggled to like any of them. It appeared that director, Jon East’s, goal was to connect you to and make you feel bad for Todd’s Stephanie Warren (at least for the better portion of the film), the only issue with this was the fact that she was just as horrid as the rest of the characters. Furthermore, the way in which the film was executed was done very poorly. While they can often add something to a film, the number of flashbacks and the placement of the many flashbacks actually took away from the story. Due to the fact that there were so many, the story became harder and harder to follow as it moved forward. These flashbacks could have potentially added a sense of mystery, causing the audience to ask questions--essentially forcing them to connect to the film even more. Again, due to the fact that there were so many flashbacks, and the fact that these flashbacks often broke up what was happening in such an unfortunate manner, I actually became incredibly detached from both the story and the characters. There were so many negatives in this film, so many that it almost completely took away from the incredible twist at the end. It wasn’t until almost three-quarters through the film that the audience was given enough information to understand what had actually taken place prior to the beginning of the film. This twist truly changed how I viewed the film. From the point in the film that I realized exactly what was happening there was a complete change in the tone and execution of the film. The final fifteen minutes or so was just about worth the struggle I went through to watch the first forty-five minutes. While the journey to the end of the film was long and quite frustrating, I thought that the end of the film was actually very entertaining. Ultimately, the issues of this film came down to the fact that Alison Hume did a terrible job of writing this film. While I enjoyed parts of this film, I cannot say that I will attempt to watch it ever again.   https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0450984/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2