DVD Review: BREAK

★☆☆☆☆

I always try not to judge direct to video horror releases to early, as there have been some wonderful surprises in that field in recent years from Ti West's chilling House of the Devil to Tim Sullivan's hilarious gorefest 2001 Maniacs. Unfortunately, there is no getting away from the fact that the majority of these releases are atrocious, irrelevant and add nothing to the genre and Matthias Olof Eich's Break is a prime example of this.
This low-budget fare follows four young "American" girls who head out into the wilderness for a camping and fun. However, as everyone knows, going into the woods can only mean trouble and this comes in the form of two demented hillbillies who subject the women to a brutal and sadistic torture.
Break, which is evidently filmed in Germany, is attempting to pass itself off as an American production for some reason. It must be that American state where everyone speaks in thick European accents? That does not stop the team from trying to cover it up with blatant shots of American flags, US licence plates and shots of a copy of USA Today. Let us also not forget the overbearing banjo soundtrack. One scene even sees these four "American" girls, who all speak in thick German accents encounter a German tourist and state "You're not from around here, are you?" This is a cliché in any genre, but one cannot help but think "Well neither are you."
The unintentional laughs come from all angles including the cringe-inducing dialogue between the girls. I'm not sure if Eich has ever heard women speak to one another, with these classy ladies bark out lines like "Tell me you don't want a piece of his ass!" and "I nearly pissed myself!" That said, these unintentional moments of humour do make the experience that little bit more bearable.
There is nothing wrong with the performances, once you get past the skewed accents and the actresses do somewhat well with the material that they are working from. Each role feels forgettable and once coated in buckets of blood, one looses track of which actress is which - not that this is of any importance to the narrative. These characters are so annoyingly incompetent that when faced with a giant scarred hillbilly, dripping with blood and holding human organs - they still go ahead and proceed into the darkened woods.
What follows is a foray of generic hacking, slicing, raping and slaughtering. This is so poorly handled that it is unlikely to please the most avid gore-seeker, bringing nothing fresh or relevant to the genre.
Break is also subject to some truly awful sound mixing which cuts from incomprehensible dialogue to deafeningly loud music. It all just feels very cheap and nasty.
I did actually feel a sense of pride after finishing the film - it was a struggle to endure all 86 minutes of Break, but I did it. Otherwise this is a twisted, nasty, cheap and irrelevant addition to the backlog of the slasher subgenre. Stick to Deliverance or Wrong Turn if you are after hillbilly horror.

- Andrew McArthur

Stars: Marina Anna Eich & Lili Schackart
Director: Matthias Olof Eich
DVD Release: 16/04/12
Buy Break On DVD