This Geek In Netflix: Shattered Lives
Sometimes a movie just reaches across the divide between media and consumer and really touches you. Sometimes a movie gives you the kind of feeling one would associate with your devoted pet proudly running up to you and dropping a two-month dead baby possum with AIDS in your lap. This would be that movie.
“Shattered Lives” was released in either 2009 or 2010… or possibly 2007. It’s all rather vague and I really don’t care. (Which is funny, as this film states that it’s a “No One Cares Production”– that’s foresight!)
This movie details the life of Rachel, a very Swedish-looking girl that is the supposed offspring of someone with a vaguely Latin-ish ethnicity and a gay Irishman. Don’t worry too much about the genetic miscasting– when they show “older Rachel” she’s vaguely Latin-ish like her mom. (AKA: Ethnic transformations for the win!)
Rachel is either absolutely batshit or is haunted by twin(ish) demonic clown/mime dolls who want her to kill things. This is never made clear by the movie, though one IMDB reviewer/tool felt like fancying their review up by writing the following verbally nebulous bullshit:
“Her fears and inability to cope with the harsh realities of life becoming so intense that they manifest themselves in an altered state of reality, a schizophrenic girl begins taking orders from a pair of clown dolls who instruct her to murder her adulterous mother.”
I don’t care how many multi-syllabic words you can put in one sentence, it’s still someone just trying to sound educated in their option of a crap movie. Carrying on.
You might have noticed by now that all the pictures thus far are pictures of the twin(ish) clown/mime dolls and you might have noticed with some alarm that those T C/M Ds are played by midgets, therefore triggering a base-fear response in your hindbrain. Please do remain calm and take slow, deep breaths until your animal instincts subside.
Even with my concern for your well-being, the topic of these pictures is not going to change. I have purposefully only taken screenshots of the T C/M Ds so you can fully appreciate my immense suffering.
In order to truly submerse you in the experience of viewing this movie, instead of my usual plot breakdown and (obviously missing) list of noteable actors (there are none), I’m just going to give you snippets of dialogue from the clown/mime dolls, one of which is Geordi LaForge.
Rachel: Who are you?
Freak #1: You are not allowed to ask such questions. We mean you no harm, we are your friends.
Freak #2: Nothing.
Freak #1: Something.
Freak #2: One thing.
Freak #1: We are everything, but everything is nothing.
Freak #2: The long-forgotten fairy tale is in her eyes. Caught inside a dream world.
Freak #1: Feelings too intense.
Freak #2: And nothing makes sense.
Freak #1: Clinging hard to her dreams.
Freak #2: And everything shatters around her.
Freak #1: I know. We will perform for you. Mouth closed, eyes open, ears listening, take a peek.
Everything that is wrong with performance art as interpreted by chiaroscuro midget clowns.
Rachel: Who are you?
Freak #1: Ooooh, we cannot tell.
Freak #2: It’s a seeecret.
Freak #1: We couldn’t.
Freak #2: We shouldn’t.
Freak #1: Noooo. I’ll whisper it into your ears while you sleep so you can remember in your dreams.
Freak #2: Dreams?
Freak #1: Dreams.
Freak #2: Dreams? Dreams are answers to questions that you do not know how to ask.
Freak #1: The child poking holes in reality.
Rachel: Who are you?
Freak #2: Sssh. *whispers*
Freak #1: He’s says if you ask that again, if you open your mouth one more time, I swear to god I’ll break it, so shut the FUCK up.
*pause*
Freak #1: What? An uncomfortable siiiiilence.
Freak #2: The little child is scared. I can smell the fear in her veins pumping through her booody.
Do you now understand how incredibly creepy and bad and so, so WRONG this is? There are scary black and white midget clown/mimes whispering bad poetry to this little Swedish kid who has a gay Irishman for a dad. It doesn’t get much worse.
Wait, it does.
Let’s say that you’re me. You’re in bed in your favorite skeleton pajamas and Halloween socks. It’s late at night, you’ve been watching midgets in black and white coo at this blonde kid. You’re starting to feel like your mind has been raped by someone’s idea of performance art and you just want the movie to either fully go over the edge or burst into flames.
And then the movie goes forward in time to deal with “older” Rachel at her high school.
And then you blink.
You blink again.
And you realize that you’re looking at footage of the high school you attended. You see the grate you tripped on six dozen times over the years, the cafeteria where you were accidentally hit by a flying large soda, the inside of the classroom where you read Lord of the Flies.
Obviously, the clowns are speaking to you, they’ve modified this movie to reflect on your life in order to embed themselves and their bad poetry into your skull.
So you go downstairs, get a knife, and go on a free-form massacre.
The clowns wanted you to do it. Who are you to question the clowns?
My life feels a little more empty now. Empty and cold. This reviewer is going to go curl up in bed for a few days and pretend that this movie, accessible on Netflix on Demand, never actually happened.
