Shattered Lives

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.

This was the most terrible movie I have EVER seen. Im serious. The acting was terrible. The plot was bad. Scenes went on for nothing. Oh and the sound was pathetic. it would go loud and then low constantly and I don't just mean in loud scenes, just bad audio period. The beginning of the movie is pretty much the end. Then it cuts to the story of a little girl and her so called reasons for why she is messed up. Once you realize what's going on it is quite easy to figure out the story. The mom is pathetic and I think that is the only thing that gave this movie any value, the fact that the mom is so terrible that you have no sympathy for her at all. I won't go into detail as it would spoil the movie, however it doesn't matter because it's not even worth watching. Save yourselves, don't bother with this movie it's SO bad.

If I met this director i'd tell him to quit film making and find a new career!!

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.

this is a very underrated film. it's not a standard horror film by any means, and I think that's where it gets misunderstood. for example, you have the standard moment in the beginning of the film (the killer wears a gas mask! which I'm surprised aren't used more in this genre) where someone gets killed (nothing special so far)..... but then the film also shows the same scene at the end of the film, but now having watched the film, we see what leads up to the event, and we see it in a new perspective. i.e. seeing a horror movie from the "monsters" point of view. Also, you got to love little clown midgets, that sounds weird, but are wonderfully creepy in a Tim Burton kind of way. highly recommended.

Actually though, I really hate bashing films like Shattered Lives.

The amount of effort, money, time, coordination, and heart that it takes to make a film --- and Carl Lindburgh did virtually everything here --- attests to the fact that he took this effort seriously. It's got to mean something to him....why does it mean so little to us?

Many reasons, actually. Shattered Lives is a good example of a neat "idea" that should never have found its way into a script-writing program. It opens with a (by now) standard montage of a psycho killer in a gas mask hacking up a room full of half-drunk, stoned kids. This might mean something if there was ever any real exposition between the killer (whose identity is obvious from reading any brief summary of the film, unfortunately) and the victims. There are a few, very quick exchanges between the kids and the killer about midway through the movie, but they don't add any kind of clear picture about possible motivations. I understand you don't need any motivation to kill someone if you're a psycho, but there's no suspense or scares to fill that gap. It's like LIndburgh made this movie to say "See, isn't it neat I can make a movie. I can turn the camera on and point it!"

This brings us to the heart of the movie, and the relationship between a little girl named Rachel and her two toy clowns who come to life whenever she's alone with them. The clowns are a problem. They are neither creepy or coherent and their behavior seems to deliberately ape the behavior of many of the ancillary characters in "Twin Peaks," especially the film "Fire Walk with Me." But whereas Lynch's inventions are very multi-dimensional and cryptic --- they're INTERESTING --- these clowns are a drag. They make insipid pantomimes, talk in ridiculous rhyming stanzas, and worse yet, their dialog is slowed down and distorted to the point that it is hard if not impossible to decipher.

In addition, there are some jaw-droppingly bad technical gaffes, the worst of which is a scene where....I kid you not....the aspect ratio changes 2 or 3 times for absolutely NO REASON. It's in a simple dialogue scene. Did someone's license to Windows DVD Maker expire?

It's a real mess, all in all. It starts from a place that you're sure you've figured out, goes on to a LONG sequence that is obvious where it's headed, then leaves you at some place you don't want to be.

Lindburgh needs to take a break from watching movies and dig up an original idea, following that with a screen writing class. Shattered Lives has nothing to offer and is a joke even by the standards of Student Film.