User Reviews

Why does the only user review of Wreckers on IMDb so far look as though it has been written by Benedict Cumberbatch's mother? I would have thought a lot of people had seen this film?

So, the good parts. Wreckers has a promising plot that belongs to a classic horror movie or a psychological thriller: A newly married couple wants to start a family. They move to the (on the surface) idyllic village where he grew up, and his brother shows up soon after. Soon enough the wife starts discovering unsettling things about her husband. (Yes, it is symbolical. He moves back + the brother shows up = symbolizes his childhood traumas being triggered by them wanting to have a child.) As the story unfolds the husband starts to show violent tendencies and it is ultimately suggested that the couple have an abusive relationship they don't really address (I might be wrong, but why would she otherwise end up in a hospital?). Overall there are all sorts of denial going on through the film but it is not clear whether the denial in it self is a good or a bad thing (this fact actually works to the film's advantage).

Technically, the acting is really good all around - Cumberbatch does "Am I gonna have to choke a bitch?" almost as well as he does "crying valiantly" and the meager script is carried as far as it ca go by the actors (Shaun Evans needs more recognition imho).

When all that is said: The film did not convince. It lacked suspense and character depth to such an extent that I was left, not only not caring about the characters, but also bored with them. The script was heavy handed and the pictures were dark beyond reason (yes, I get it, something lies hidden in the darkness etc. etc. but it still felt as too much darkness).

All in all I guess -i would recommend this film to anyone on the look for a not-so-thrilling-but-well-acted thriller with a psychological subplot.

So, this starts out interestingly enough: The wayward, troubled veteran brother comes back home for a visit and threatens normal, stable brother's happy marriage. Not wholly original, but interesting. A solid dramatic premise.

As several reviewers here have pointed out, the movie is unnecessarily slow. Actually, it isn't unnecessary. It's slow because a feature has to be a minimum of about 90 minutes, and the screenwriter who--surprise--is also the director, seemed unable to come up with enough story to fill this thing out. So, there are a lot of filler shots of wallpaper, curios, cobwebs and--as someone has already mentioned--characters staring blankly.

I don't know who D. R. Hood (the director/screenwriter) is but, apparently unable to think of any actual story events having to do with the returning brother, she decides about halfway through the film to turn it into a story about the couple's inability to have a baby. She starts a half-baked plot thread about a childhood "friend" of the brothers who has (unknowingly) been cuckolded by his wife and the wayward brother. The cuckold makes a pass at Claire Foy (the supposedly happy, stable bro's wife) which she brushes off.

But then, discovering that her husband (normal brother)is the cause of their inability to conceive, Claire immediately turns to the cuckolded friend for a quick shagging. Up until now, she's rebuffed his advances, but after all, she wants a baby so what the hell. I guess adoption was not an option.

What has this to do with the returning brother, you might ask? Not much. The obvious plot development would be to have *him* be the sperm reservoir whom Claire turns to for a good shagging--at least keeping the baby within the same, general gene pool as her husband. Why drag in this fourth, barely developed character to serve that function? And then give him a major part in the movie's final scene? Meanwhile, returning veteran brother is nowhere to be found. He just disappears from the last five or eight minutes of the film.

Oh, I almost forgot: There were some murky hints that the brothers shared some kind of incestuous, carnal relationship that were never quite clear to me.

Anyway, there was a serviceable premise and some really good acting here. And I like the gradual revelations about the crazy deeds of the loopy, AWOL brother turning out, in fact, to be deeds of the supposedly stable brother. But the story--as slight as it is--is a mess, in my opinion.

This director should probably leave the script writing to someone else next time.

I was disappointed in this movie. The trailer made is seem like a deep, captivating film, but in the end, it tried too hard. The first half of the movie was slow, and while the second half picked up a bit, it wasn't enough to save the film. It felt as if half the movie consisted of shots of the actors staring 'meaningfully' at each other, and the other half was shots of trees and leaves. It got to the point where the meaningful stares became humorous in their regularity. That being said, I was pleased with the performances from all of the actors/actresses. It wasn't quite enough to save the film for me, but all did a great job.

..contains spoilers... the most important scene in the film involves her on her back giving in to a character in the film of which the audience learns very little.. yea, she really loves her husband and she desperately wants a kid.. so, she gets a bit p-o'd at him for not divulging he'd been firing blanks with a previous love interest, and ten seconds later she's on the floorboards heels-up with Gary from 'her-past'.... ...seriously, a few more minutes re-writing, making more sense of this, and it would have come off a much better production.. it's not like they didn't have the screen time available... and Foy is special.. a joy to watch.. stay tuned, she is going to continue to do lots of great things..

This movie does not straight up tell you the dark truths that are being hinted at. You have to realize it for yourself. It initially appears fairly simple. Dawn isn't able to have a baby with her husband David, and David's insane (maybe not so insane) ex-military brother, Nick, comes to stay for a while. There is a much darker story at the root of it all. It appears that David and his brother are both pathological liars. I kept hoping for some huge discovery of information, but the film deliberately ends up leaving you with more questions in the end than at the beginning.

It's time to play a little Sherlock Holmes here, people. Get out your thinking caps because there is plenty of evidence in the film to suggest what I am about to claim.

Now, listen carefully. Brother Nick claims of an abusive father. David claims of an abusive mother. David tells his wife in confidence that it was Nick who shoved their mother down a flight of stairs which hospitalized her years ago in the past. Dawn finds out the truth from Nick, which that it was actually David who committed this act. She asks him why he lied, initially blaming it on Nick. He responds and says because their mother was abusive. This doesn't make sense to lie about. If the past was too painful, you wouldn't bring it up at all. He instead blamed it on his own brother, the very brother he was protecting? If you were protecting him, why tell such a hideous lie? Clearly there was a more sinister reason for doing it. The reason David says his mother was abusive, is because she at one point probably found out about an incestuous relationship between David and his brother.

Jumping to the end (when the story really breaks open), you almost think Dawn was tricked. It's because she was. There are two massive plot developments here. A scene where she insists Nick tell her the truth about him and her husband David after Nick runs away because of a fight. Alone together at Nick and David's old abandoned farm; Nick screams at her, hurt and upset, and says: "He Fu*ks you, but he loves me (referring to David). When we were younger.. look, our dad was abusive. And David would protect me.. He sort of.. owned me". These lines startle her so much that she storms away in fury and tells him she will return with money so that he can leave town. She doesn't want to believe the words she just heard. And, neither do you (or I) the viewers. Hence why they never shove the truth in your face. You have to figure this out. I felt like the smoking gun followed this scene. Dawn goes home to retrieve money for Nick in secrecy so she can have him leave town from his secret location after running away. David claims to not know where Nick is at first. She leaves the house with money and some items to help his brother leave town. When she returns to the abandoned farm to give him the money, Nick is no longer there. David knew where she was going all along, clearly. When she returns home, she is in labor (impregnated by a close friend because she desperately wanted a baby, but this is irrelevant to the darker part of the story). She falls to the ground in the lawn, and the first thing she asks is: "Where is he, where is Nick? He's back.. He came back. He was suppose to be at the barn". David says "I know". But doesn't tell her where Nick is. She insistently asked where Nick is with no reply - he just stares at her. David and Nick coordinated seeing each other while she was away looking for Nick to give him money to leave town. This is obvious. David is caught in multiple lies through out the film that imply a past he is not being honest about. Again, it is up to you, the viewer, to understand what it probably the truth here. There is even a scene were Nick decides to put on Dawn's clothes, dress up as a woman, and karaoke in front of his brother dressed as a woman. The look on David's face falls to complete depression. It's as if it makes him sad for reasons we do not know as the viewer.

Sometimes a story this dark is better alluded to, rather than shoving it directly in your face. The subject matter is so dark, one probably would not want to see such scenes played out on film. This is a clever screen play, and in that regards I'm massively impressed. It truly leaves the viewer to do a little detective work as it's clear Dawn simply cannot handle the truth (and neither can the viewer honestly). And no, I am not suffering from Sherlock Cumberbatch syndrome, ha!

I guess the ultimate point to this piece however, is possibly the message that happiness comes in many forms. That's all I could gather from this film. That, and acceptance. We must accept the ones we love even when it doesn't make sense to us. There is more that meets the eye when it comes to David, and its left to the viewer to decide what those dark truths are though difficult to think about. There are clues through out the entire film that David has been involved sexually with Nick. Trust me, I didn't want to believe this. But that is the point. The viewer doesn't want to believe this scenario is possible, and neither does Dawn. At the end, she chooses happiness, has the baby (though another sperm donor), and tries to live her life with David never to know the truth. Ignorance is bliss, and some times not knowing the truth is better than looking it in the face.

The lack of score maybe makes it more difficult to figure out what's going on in this film, but the clues are all there. Dawn doesn't want to face the truth about David. The performances are actually pretty incredible. The plot is a little too clever. I can see how the writer might have thought they were giving it away, but it seems most people couldn't tell after all. There were some complaints about a lot of staring, but it seemed to me that people were staring because they were slowly realizing something.

See the review from user riverwanderer9 if you really want to know what's happening plot-wise.

This film is far from perfect, it suffers from a visibly low budget (the version I watched had such bad audio quality I could hardly make out what they were saying most of the time) and maybe being a tad too subtle for its own good. But having watched it for the second time, I've stopped seeing the lack of answers and clear plot points as a flaw, it's most likely an integral part of the director's vision.

Important information and dialogue is glossed over, so that you have to pay really close attention to catch every little detail in order to make sense of the bigger picture, in a kind of "show, don't tell" filmmaking that I found incredibly refreshing. What I like the most about this film is its underlying darkness, which seeps through the shots of beautiful countryside and accordeon-based soundtracks.

The story seems fairly straight-forward, a young married couple that is trying to have a baby receives a visit from the husband's younger brother. But from this simple dynamic some very dark subjects are explored.

This film's saving grace is the actors: Claire Foy as Dawn, the young wife is incredibly compelling in her role as the observer of the brothers' relationship, Benedict Cumberbatch is very subtle in his portrayal of David, the husband, who reveals a hidden darkness as the film progresses, and Shaun Evans is equally compelling as Nick, the younger brother who comes back from the war with PTSD and inserts himself in the couple's life, disrupting their peace but in the process also revealing David's true nature.

I thought the way the brothers' horrible childhood was revealed bit by bit and the way their relationship slowly reveals itself to be so twisted was brilliant, and an incredible study on trauma and on small communities.

It's a film I would recommend to anyone who likes movies which focus on character study and likes to pick apart the scenes to find hidden meanings, and also to people who like films set in rural England which unveil its unsettling, eerie side.