Broken Bird (2024) Review

Sybil Chamberlain (Rebecca Calder) has just landed her perfect job, working as a mortician at a funeral parlour run by the kindly Mr. Thomas (James Fleet). The only survivor of a tragic car accident which took the rest of her family when she was just years ago, Sybil’s interest in death has grown over time at a similar rate to her increasing flights of fancy into a world where even outsiders such as she can find lasting love and live her dreams for real.

With a social life which mainly consists of avoiding other attendees at a nearby pub’s poetry night and taking various trips to the local Roman Funeral Museum, it’s during one of these visits that Sybil bumps into friendly employee Mark (Jay Taylor) and she is instantly smitten. Can she keep her increasingly twisted desires at bay and find true happiness?

Based on the 2018 short film which shares its name with the main character, director Joanne Mitchell has taken the source material from original writer Tracey Sheals and, with regular collaborator Dominic Brunt providing the script for this feature-length incarnation, has created a readily identifiable but slightly skewed universe rich with detail. Beautifully realised, vivid fantasy sequences balance delicately with ice cold reality and the piece constantly keeps the viewer on their toes with a smattering of gore and more than a dash of gallows humour.

In the lead role, Calder is incredible, giving a multi-layered performance which plays with the audience’s sympathy in the most complicated of ways. Her day to day look recalls many a Tim Burton heroine but Sybil possesses a dark side so deep it would send those women running. She’s also far stronger than the Goth dream girls of those multiplex-friendly visions, as demonstrated by a scene in which she faces up to the bigmouth of a group of skateboarders making comments about her. It’s moments such as this which make her later decisions so conflicting for the viewer because there’s fascinating intelligence and bizarre likeability about her.

Yes, Sybil is a strange one, that’s for certain, but she’s played with a depth and sympathy which makes her a fascinating character even when she’s thinking – and later doing – the most awful things. Her interactions, actual and imagined, with the dead  run the gamut from her caring “How long have you been there?” to a shredded fox on the road, through to startling revenge driven by the perceived philandering of one of the funeral home’s recent admissions. She’s hilarious, mournful and unnerving, often in the same line of dialogue.

Although Sybil is at once a background figure in general society, others can’t help but be pulled into her orbit by dint of her sketchy past and her uncertain present, including detective Emma (Sacharissa Claxton embodying a storm of raw emotion), on compassionate leave following a harrowing event in her own recent history but given fresh resolve to get to the bottom of a mystery when her choice of location to take a break proves too serendipitous not to follow up a few old leads.

Joanne Mitchell handles the material with an unerring confidence that belies the fact that Broken Bird is her first full-length feature as a director. The performances are note perfect, every characterisation drawn in satisfying shades of grey. The visual style often alters depending upon whether we’re viewing a situation through Sybil’s version of her own utopia or when the gloom of everyday existence comes crashing in, occasionally throwing the audience by using the aesthetic to present an outrageous turn of events as fact, only to pull a switch at the last moment to reveal it was nothing of the sort.

There’s a point of no return within the tale which I initially thought had the potential to be a huge misstep, the sudden turn it takes threatening to collapse the carefully built, psychological house of cards being gradually stacked in Sybil’s mind. Considering what had gone before, why did I need to worry? Those decisions bear fruit in a superb climax which is both terrifically tense and achingly sad. It also leaves ample room for questions and discussions once the credits have stopped rolling.

Broken Bird is one of the most impressive horror films of the year, with a remarkable central performance from Rebecca Calder and excellent supporting work from Claxton and Fleet. I’m still thinking about it and I’m sure it won’t leave my thoughts for some time. It’s funny, it’s shocking, it’s tear jerking. It’s brilliant.

Movie Rating:

Broken Bird trailer