BREAK (2009)

Streaming on Tubi!
Directed/Written by Matthias Olof Eich

This particularly vile yet by the numbers killers in the woods flick is not going to impress many. BREAK is a German film made to look like it was made in America with much of the cast trying to hide their accents while speaking English. Going into this film I had high hopes, as it started out as reminiscent of THE DESCENT as four strong-willed women make their way through the Canadian mountains on a camping trip, but soon the film devolves into every brutal stalk and slash film you’ve ever seen.

Following formula, we get to know these girls in the first 30 minutes and there’s even a bit of depth to one or two of the characters. One of them is pregnant and has just broken up with her boyfriend; one seems to be in love with another but scared to say it. There’s a token black girl along who is, of course, sassy. Soon they run into a pair of hunters in the woods who of course see women and immediately say to themselves “let’s rape and kill them”, like hunters in these types of films often do. By 40 minutes in, though, with all of that character out of the way, it’s time to kill half of the girls off immediately. Of course, per formula, the black girl bites it first. After an agonizingly long rape scene, the two hunters track down the remaining two women in the woods. I hate to overuse the word, of course, but things continue to proceed at a predictable manner as the hunted become the hunted. The advantage shifts back and forth until not many are left, resulting in an ending we’ve seen a million times before.

It’s not that BREAK is a bad film. It’s just that it’s been done so many times before and offers really nothing new to the genre. The effects are rather good. Writer/director Matthias Olof Eich directs capably and tells a clear story despite its familiarity. Eich should also be commended (or committed, depending on what stance you have on the violence) for his guts to go to base levels of gore and depravity, the final knifing scene being genuinely wince-inducing. The actresses do a good job of making us care a bit about them and the hunters do their best to be despicable, most of the time in a manner that works. But aside from being particularly brutal with the kills and the retribution the surviving girls give back to their tormentors, BREAK turned out to be utterly predictable.