Mercy Falls Children’s Hospital, on the Isle of Wight, is about to close down for good. With a train crash filling up the intended transfer hospital, the remaining eight children and skeleton staff are forced to wait for a few days before they can leave. Barely holding on to her self-control following an earlier, devastating case of alleged negligence, night shift nurse Calista Flockhart is alarmed by an unusual number of cases involving broken bones among the children. The kids themselves talk ominously of a “mechanical girl” on the abandoned, apparently haunted second floor. Flockhart discovers that the “ghost” may be the restless spirit of a brittle-bone patient whose abuse and murder at the hands of a psychopathic nurse in the 50’s tarnished the hospital’s good name.
FRAGILE, a UK / Spain co-production, possesses the pervasive aura of menace that characterized director Jaume Balaguero’s relentlessly creepy previous two movies, THE NAMELESS and DARKNESS. Although the story leans on the derivative side – inevitable in a crowded ghost film market – it is a fine showcase for Balaguero’s skill at freezing the blood without falling back on false scares or explicit gore. Lingering shots of darkened, empty corridors and carefully timed moments of genuine alarm create a sense of unease from the start, while one overt scare scene involving bed sheets is a jolter. Balaguero this time forsakes the downbeat trend of his earlier genre movies in favor of a relatively sentimental resolution here – though it works surprisingly well.
Flockhart’s delicate features and ability to inhabit an unglamorous, troubled character make her apt casting for the role of the emotionally unstable heroine in FRAGILE, though there are no slackers in this cast. Giving the film additional edge is its grotesque, disturbing female ghost : a murderous nurse prone to causing fractures in children (before and after her death) so that they won’t leave her care. If the movie has any major flaws, it’s that this scary figure is afforded too many close-ups during the finale and that Roque Banos’ often beautiful, evocative score sometimes becomes overwrought and intrusive.
-Steven West
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
