Opening Day: 30 March 2006


Synopsis :

As the new night nurse (Flockhart ) at a soon to be abandoned children's hospital readies the last group of orphans to leave, it becomes increasingly clear that these are not normal children. Something living in the hospital, something the children call the "mechanical girl," has a
terrifying hold over them and will stop at nothing to keep them in the hospital with her forever.

Movie Review:

Hidden away from the cities, was a children hospital amidst an English island. The two stories high building was as old and grand, gloomily pregnant with an arcane presence that was becoming increasingly worrisome for its occupants. There was a rumor that Charlotte the mechanical ghost haunted the hospital, but the adults with their mature logics and their cast-iron world of certainties, whom over the years have forgotten terrors and fears that lurked in closets and toilet mirrors, debunked the mysterious apparition.

Amy, a fall from grace nightingale was employed as a temporary night nurse with the hospital. Befriending a special orphan, she found herself spiraling down the rabbit hole of suspense and self-redemption.

Spanish director Jaume Balagueró is obsessed with three things; his fascination with female and children protagonists evidenced by his previous films, spooky themes and undermining his own works. With his first two feature-length films, Balagueró has brought us suspense and terror with ‘Darkness’ (2002) and ‘The Nameless’ (1999), hammering another nail into his fixated genre with ‘Fragile: A Ghost Story’.

It was endearing to watch Calista Flockhart’s first lead role on the silver screen as a weary heroine with a troubled past. Flockhart had indeed aged through the years since Ally Mcbeal, luckily her acting, too had seasoned, giving ‘Fragile’ a fairly good boost. Richard Roxburgh, you might remember him as The Duke from ‘Moulin Rouge’ (2001) or Count Vladislaus Dracula from ‘Van Helsing’ (2004), was wrongfully cast as the caring pediatrician. With the likes of Ralph Fiennes, Kevin Becon and Sean Bean, they were most delicious to watch as malicious and maniacal demons in human form, to cast these fine actors in puny, restricted heroic types are both unjust and unchallenging to their craft and fans.

In the familiar fashion of the Japanese cult horror, ‘Ringu’(1998), Amy and Dr. Robert inquired feverishly into the hospital’s darkly secret and entangled in a fearsome battle for the children’s lives. Sounds thrilling? Sadly, ‘Fragile’ is no ‘Ringu’, despite its potency of warming us up from the film’s exquisite definition of grim mystery and spooky occurrences had us curling up in our seats, grimacing with fear, it failed to climax at its showdown.

I feel that horror movies as such, have always possessed an important ordinance to creep people of their surroundings. Meaning that confined lifts, lone corridors, toilets with blinking lights or phone calls in the middle of the night can never be the same again after watching a horror movie. The genre’s popularity lies in its ability to turn a familiar or habitual venue into fearful taboos.

‘Fragile’ built up with Amy’s lift charging into the inaccessible and forbidden second floor of the hospital willfully, the slaying of supporting cast in solitary blinks, to the hospital’s collapse from the wrath of the obstinate Charlotte, and finally into the Amy’s venture into the demonic lair against the mechanical menace. All the above scenarios offered by ‘Fragile’ were conceptually engaging, but failed to deliver the anticipation it had generated. Instead of keeping the supporting cast afraid and us spooked, Balagueró refused to milk what was worth of the suspense and chose to end them simply, dead. It was the same for the grand finale with Amy in the dilapidated and murky second floor, facing Charlotte, facing the evil. They ran, they fell through the first floor and that’s that! It was a huge let down for all that hype and creativity sown. It was such a pity because ‘Fragile’ had a direction with so much potential to make history as a horror masterpiece.

Movie’s a tad too familiar and too short with unimpressive climaxes are probably my only complaints about ‘Fragile’. It comes nowhere to its greater counterparts like ‘Ringu’ or ‘Ju-On’ (2003), but ‘Fragile’ has a signature of it’s own and certainly had me curling in my seat, half shielding my eyes, grimacing at some of it’s scenes.

Movie Rating:

(Despite having Director Jaume Balagueró shortchanging us with its anti-climatic flow and its short runtime, ‘Fragile’ is morosely tasteful with its grisly cinematography and its promising storyline)

Review by Ang Wei Kiat