‘Broken Bird’ Review – An Interesting, But Disappointing Psychological Thriller

Broken Bird, Joanne Mitchell’s directorial debut, follows Sybil (Rebecca Calder), a quirky, imaginative undertaker’s assistant fresh on the job in a new town, as well as Emma (Sacharissa Claxton), a police investigator and grieving mother whose son has gone missing. The film bounces between the two storylines with pretty minimal overlap, but has an interesting way of coming together at various points. 

Sybil’s throughline gets a majority of the action, and therefore is much more compelling. The film gets bogged down when it switches to Emma’s point of view. There’s a pretty intense tonal whiplash between the dark, humorous, and even whimsical nature of Sybil’s character and the very serious, depressed Emma. These tones don’t mix too well together, and the oddities found in Sybil’s world are more thought-out and fun to spend time with. It’s clear that Mitchell had two pretty different stories that she wanted to tell and found a way to fit them together in this script.

Calder’s turn is by far the standout of the film, blurring the lines of an endearing, singular personality and a deeply disturbed person. She brilliantly gives the same performance throughout the movie, allowing the story around her to shape the context and how she is perceived. Sybil is a dreamer, shown both in how she interacts in the world and in her explicit daydream sequences at different points in the movie. Some may call these dreams delusions, but to her, they are just her perceived reality. Whether it’s imagining herself planting an unforeseen kiss on the local museum worker, or thinking of the life she could share with a corpse that comes through her workplace, Sybil always has her head in the clouds. It’s this sweet, yet sinister nature that makes her so compelling as a character. 

The tonal dissonance is really what brings Broken Bird down overall, spending way too much time with a lackluster storyline that messes with any momentum that Sybil’s side of things builds. Emma definitely garners sympathy as she grieves throughout the movie, but does very little to move the narrative along. That would be fine if this were slow cinema, expecting the audience to sit with its characters for long stretches. Anytime Emma appears on screen, you can expect the film to come to a screeching halt. 

Mitchell hammers home the fact that it takes a special kind of person to work as a mortician, and there’s something peculiar about these folks that is compelling to explore. How can one be surrounded by death constantly and not come out of it a little messed up? Tack on the isolating nature of the job, and you wind up with some interesting characters, to say the least. Sybil’s desensitized view of death clouds her judgment as she seeks love and connection, leading her to escalatingly disturbing behaviors. 

Broken Bird has some interesting concepts to explore, but never quite gets there with any of them. The main thing to recommend is Calder’s performance. She carries the film on her shoulders, propping up the story when things don’t have a lot of juice. Without her, the film falls apart. Ultimately, the movie never delivers on scares or thrills like you’d want it to. Mitchell shows promise as a director and creative mind, but never quite gets this one where it needs to go.

Broken Bird is currently playing in select theaters courtesy of Catalyst Studios and Seismic Releasing.