Breaking Nikki Review

• 14th Apr 2011

Redemption is back and we can hopefully expect some delicious slices of sadomasochistic exploitation horror over the coming months. They kick off their return with the psychological thriller Breaking Nikki by Hernan Findling. The film centres on a prostitute who becomes involved in a sick psychological game with a client. Nikki, on arrival at her client’s house, is told to dress up and alter her appearance to that of a girl called Susan. Sadly for Nikki her new client is a little more demanding than your regular customer and seems hell-bent on keeping her around until she fully accepts that she is, in fact, Susan.

Drawing somewhat on the Hitchcock classic Vertigo, Breaking Nikki is a little slow for the first third before picking up pace.  Classic B-movie devices are on show here as the entire narrative demands that Nikki is located only in a couple of rooms as her ordeal goes on and on. The feeling of claustrophobia is superbly captured and results in very low production costs without looking cheap. The viewer is as disorientated as the lead character as a lack of exposition provides a constant question as to why any of this is actually happening.

The narrative is slow to get going but once we get into the meat of the proceedings things really do start to deliver. There is one sequence that has Nikki bound to a chair having pins stuck into her face which has an admirable feeling of icky-ness. Oddly, even the performances pick up in the second half of the film after a pretty ropey start during the initial role playing scenes. As dialogue is kept to a minimum and the violence is upped to the maximum, Breaking Nikki has much to commend it.

Director Hernan Findling perfectly understands how to build a narrative to a crescendo as the final twenty minutes turns into a stunning orgy of glorious violence. Drawing from such legendary directors as Bunuel (That Obscure Object of Desire) and Polanski (Repulsion) the conclusion is delightfully convoluted to say the least. This psycho-drama is a superb B-Movie addition to the genre. Findling has thankfully not shied away from the need to provide images that will challenge his audience with Nikki’s journey into madness.

This return of Redemption is a triumph as it more than lives up to the reputation the label forged over the past decade. Breaking Nikki is a small-budget film that suffers somewhat in terms of performances in the first half of the film. Thankfully, as the psycho-drama begins to take centre stage the narrative moves from dialogue to images. This is when the film truly comes into its own as the trials of Nikki are wonderfully captured with excellent scenes of torture and degradation. The photography actually exceeds the budget delivering an Argento-esque combination of a deliberate colour palate mixed with bloodletting and violence.  For fans of Redemption, Breaking Nikki is more than enough to keep them going until the next release.

Aled Jones