FRACTURED

US, 2019, 99 minutes, Colour.
Sam Worthington, Lily Rabe, Lucy Capri, Adjoa Andoh, Stephen Tobolowsky, Lauren Cochrane, Shane Dean, Chad Bruce.
Directed by Brad Anderson.


Fractured is one of those films that have been described as mind-bending.

Sam Worthington plays a loving father, but some tension with his wife, after a period of alcoholism. On a road trip, when they stop at a service station, his daughter, attracted by a dog and fearing it, falls over a wall, her father trying to stop her, and her mother then dismayed, going down to them.

But, throughout the film, the audience is always challenged as to what actually happened. What has happened in the father’s mind, his reaction to his daughter, he and her mother travelling to a hospital, then being made to wait, red tape, discussions with doctors, the disappearance of his wife.


His behaviour becomes more erratic, a disturbance in the hospital so that the police are called. They revisit the site of the accident – which raises further questions of what is going on in the father’s mind, what happened in reality, his hallucinatory behaviour in the hospital.

Many audiences will enjoy this mind-bending experience even if they are not certain at the end what actually happened.


1. The title? With reference to Ray? With reference to Peri?

2. The setting, the road through the water, the pitstop and the building site, the roads, the hospital, interiors? The musical score?

3. The title and the physical damage? Mental damage? Reality? Fantasy? Defence mechanisms and the imagination?, And guilt?

4. The family in the car, Ray and his tension, driving slowly, Joanna and her criticisms, Peri playing in the back? The pitstop, his not having cash, Peri going to the toilet, losing her compact, her mother going to search, Peri wandering away, the balloon, the dog and the menace, Ray thrown the stone, her falling, Ray falling trying to catch her? His injury, loss of consciousness, Peri all right, Joanna recovering them? The decision to travel to the hospital, the speed?

5. The hospital, the emergency, full, the attitude of the staff, the bureaucracy, signing in, having to wait, Ray becoming desperate, Joanna with the daughter? Eventually getting in, the doctor being kind, the doctor with the toy, Joanna going, Ray excluded, in the waiting room, the hours passing? The different personnel on staff, at the desk, the phone calls, the doctors, his questions, becoming more desperate?

6. Ray desperate, mental anguish, physical attack, going into forbidden areas, his being pursued, the security guards, the doctors, put in the room, breaking the glass, escaping, hiding?

7. The police officers, his appeal, then listening, going to the hospital, the interrogations, the doing the right thing? The doctor coming from home, the doctors on staff?

8. Going to the scene of the accident, the discovery of the blood, the police becoming suspicious? Arresting Ray?

9. Back at the hospital, the gun, going into the operation? Organ transplants, the boxes, the rubbish falling open? The surgery?

10. The counsellor, listening, enabling rate talk? His arrest?

11. The various possibilities for a solution? Ray in the car with Joanna and Peri? Ray in the car with the accident victim? Interchanging? The realism of the accident are going to the hospital? The possibility that Joanna was injured when she fell, the blood, Ray disposing of the bodies? The reality of his former wife, on the documents, his drinking, his trauma and guilt? And mixtures of all these theories?