BROKEN BIRD (2024)

New in select theaters from Catalyst Studios and Seismic Releasing!
Directed by Joanne Mitchell.
Written by Dominic Brunt, Joanne Mitchell, Tracey Sheals.
Check out the trailer here!!

Rebecca Calder plays Sybil, a socially awkward mortician who gets a new job at a funeral home, writes poetry, and falls in love with a local museum attendant named Mark (Jay Taylor). Meanwhile, a grieving mother and former cop named Emma (Sacharissa Claxton) searches for answers about her missing boy. These two stories tie together in the most gruesome of ways.

BROKEN BIRD is a wonderful character study of a very damaged woman. We get to see bits and pieces of Sybil’s past which was less than ideal, making it somewhat understandable why she turned out to be the off-kilter person she is as an adult. In a lot of ways, this is a retelling of Lucky McKee’s excellent MAY, as both characters are damaged beyond repair and are on doomed paths in their search for love. Like May, Sybil lives a lot of her life in her head, attempting to understand the world around her, but ultimately clueless how to appropriately interact with others. Seeing these interactions throughout BROKEN BIRD made me squirm as you know none of this will end well for the naive, yet dangerous protagonist.

Rebecca Calder plays that protagonist excellently. With her perfectly chiseled bangs to her buttoned-up clothes and stiff mannerisms, Calder gives off a feeling of discomfort with every scene she is in. She excels at mortician work, which would be great if not for her natural desire to find a companion. It’s this need and the lack of her ability to understand how to socialize that makes it all feel so wrong watching her make these terrible mistakes in trying to find happiness. Again, as with MAY, there is this conflict in watching a truly strange person with a normal desire try to go about finding happiness that makes BROKE BIRD hard to watch, yet impossible to ignore.

This is a testament to Calder’s acting as in a less commanding actresses’ grip, I don’t think Sybil would come off as so likable. Even when the final shoe drops and connections between the various plot points are pulled together, Sybil remains a doomed soul you kind of root for despite the horrible things that have happened. Calder commands every scene she is in, communicating volumes through her silent interactions and futile attempts to fit in.

Of course, with the discomfort of watching Sybil make all these bad decisions comes an inevitable end which, while I found it to be somewhat predictable, still wraps up in an operatic fashion- flipping between Sybil’s fantasy world she lives in and the real world. It doesn’t make BROKEN BIRD to be the most entertaining watch, but I cannot deny the power in filmmaker Joanne Mitchell’s storytelling paired with Calder’s lead performance. It’s not as quirky and iconic as MAY’s Angela Bettis, but still this is a story worth checking out for those who are entertained by wallowing in the uncomfortable and disturbing world of social ignorance. Recommended, but prepare to wince and squirm quite a bit with BROKEN BIRD.