Shattered Lives

Following the death of her grandparents, a woman's quest for revenge on the guilty party assumes a similar role that she undertook as a youngster when demonic clowns appeared to her in order to kill and has it continue on her new role.

This was an utterly dreadful and completely worthless effort. About the only thing that needs to be watched is the opening massacre of the college students which contains some rather nice stalking, a few decent kills and a burst of energy that's completely missing from the rest of the film. That it has the nerve to replay this exact sequence at the end says it all about the quality of the rest of the movie for it couldn't be bothered to try anything else. The flaws here are numerous in both quantity and execution, the most egregious of all is the fact that the demonic clowns at the heart of the story are so completely uninteresting and non-threatening that they're a joke to be considered creepy, given lame design work that's completely cliché alongside computerized speaking voices that are obviously distorted human voices instead of truly demonic-sounding beings that really ruins their overall effectiveness with all the time we have to spend on these weak supposed-villains. On top of that, they're thrust into such a completely uninteresting story that even if they had been creepy it would've been hard to take the rest of the film seriously as this plays off more like a fifth-rate Lifetime channel affair concerning an adulterous mother and her clueless husband who are thrust into exaggeratedly overlong scenes that go on forever to clue us into her mental disorder that ends up beating us so over-the-top with that message it loses the impact and just becomes tedious to sit through. Lastly, the whole movie is rendered near unwatchable by the low-budget on display which causes the audio numerous problems of dropping in-and-out of the scene, never giving this anything to do so it just feels boring and is loaded with so many camera tricks and angles that try to convince us something's happening but ultimately highlights the futility of what's going on. Overall there's so little to offer here it's not worthwhile.

Rated R: Graphic Language, Graphic Violence, Brief Nudity and a sex scene.

I purchased Shattered Lives because I am in the middle of doctoral research on evil children in film and had no other way of watching it to check out the narrative to determine its appropriateness. After collecting over 300 titles of varying standards, I'm now down to the bottom of the proverbial barrel with this hackneyed shot-on-video student film. There are some really dreadful evil child films out there, such as Robert Voskanian's 1977 Z-grader, The Child, but this film is way more tedious with its overlong scenes and crawling pace, sloppy editing, trite dialogue and uneven soundtrack. A few reviewers have highlighted the poor performances of the actors and most of them do indeed feel very staged and self-conscious, but I'm going to leave these poor souls alone considering the substandard material they had to work with, written by the wannabe director cum producer cum editor Carl Lindberg, who is yet to produce anything of any substance and seems obsessed with emulating Donnie Darko for some inexplicable reason. Finally, a very bloody and contrived multiple murder sequence that opens and closes the film is rendered uninteresting because of its outlandish scenario so that this too devolves into pure tedium. I'm usually quite patient and forgiving with films but I found myself sighing and fast forwarding through meaningless scenes that went for too long, such as an awkward dance performed by two dwarfs dressed as harlequin dolls, endlessly circling each other for about six minutes - sounds intriguing but it's not.

My advice? There are too many really solid shot-on-video horror films flooding the market these days to justify wasting your time fast forwarding through this lifeless morass.

How this was released beyond a school film department I have no idea, but it has some of the worst acting, sound mixing, music, and editing I've seen in years, and this from someone who loves low-budget schlock as much as art film. Stuck it out to the bitter end: Poignant scenes came off as trite and repetitive, the robo-drawl clowns were far more irritating than creepy, and the delivery was often given with all the passion of a middle school play. Technically and artistically, the film is a complete bomb. With any luck, this is Lindbergh's last film.

I even ended up putting my grocery list together during the incredibly long fake emo scenes toward the end. It sounded like a LiveJournal read aloud, there was just nothing of substance to grip on to.

The height of tackiness is when the director shills his own movies in the reviews! A Carl L. was the only 5-star on Blockbuster, and a lucas_smidth whose only other high rating was for another Carl Lindbergh film just happened to be the highest rater here.

Unfortunately, I can not recommend this film. If there were more money invested into the technical and casting aspects of the movie, I have a feeling it would have been a great movie. However, an awful mess of poor acting, miserable (emphasis on the miserable) audio mixing, and poor direction earn this film a 1. The storyline is quite predictable, however you can't help but feel sorry for Rachel. Yes, the "dolls" are creepy, however the negative aspects described above greatly outweigh any potential there could have been with them (especially the trite robot voices). The only reason I watched past the 15 minute mark was out of sheer morbid curiosity.

You can't spell Shattered Lives with hate , hatred , shatter , sad , and lie . These words , slowly emerging during the opening , pretty much sums up this movie(maybe abit) . The movie opens with blood and gore , making you ax , why ? SL is a mix movie , drama-horror . It has a low-budget feel to it based on my instincts . Not horror-drama , drama is emphasized . It tells of a family gone wrong in two stages , from the main character perspective . When she's young and when she's older(teen) .

Let's start from young . You have a little girl in soon-to-be troubled family . She's a cute little thing and delivers good performance . There will be some horror aspect in terms of demon clowns . They are creepy , scary , and their dialogues are flowery . Then we have the father and mother , average acting . It doesn't take very long for everything to spiral into oblivion ( due to lies) , so the pacing isn't so bad except some family-talks(boring imo) . Silence is well-used to create a depressing atmosphere , you can feel the tension .

The 2nd stage , MC gets older . This 2nd half didn't seem pretty good , maybe due to lack of demon clowns . Tho they do appear .The story wasn't quite strong in this one . This part is allocated from revenge(hatred) . From there , the opening of the movie will make sense .

At the end , you will be served with a grim ending , where everything pretty much shatters apart .

An enjoyable drama mixed with horror movie , an above-average movie .