The Broken 2008

Gina McVey, a successful radiologist, spends her days scanning x-rays and piecing together the strange medical clue of Situs Inversus, a rare condition where the heart and other organs sit mirrored from their usual places. On the birthday of her father, John McVey, Gina invites her boyfriend, Stefan Moreau, her brother, Daniel McVey, and his girlfriend, Kate Coleman, to celebrate at John’s home. The party hums with warmth and chatter until a mishap unsettles the host’s mood: a mirror had been knocked askew as John entered, and it shatters in the middle of the dinner.

The next day at work, Gina is confused by her assistant, Anthony, who claims to have seen her leaving the building when she insists she has been inside all along. On her way home, a startling encounter unfolds: a woman who looks exactly like Gina is driving a car identical to hers. Driven by curiosity and fear, Gina follows the other woman to a flat and discovers a photograph of Gina with her father tucked inside a room that isn’t hers. Terrified by this doppelganger, Gina races away and, in a panic, collides head-on with another car in the street. She wakes up in a hospital with no memory of the crash, its fragments drifting through her mind like a half-remembered riddle.

A physician named Dr Dr Robert Zachman introduces himself and discusses what Gina cannot quite recall. He leaves his card as a quiet reminder that memory and identity can be fragile, especially after a traumatic accident. Gina is discharged, and Stefan brings her back to his apartment, where the oddities begin to pile up: Stefan claims to have broken a mirror by accident, and a dog in the flat behaves aggressively, a signal that something is off in their relationship or reality itself.

That night, Gina sleeps fitfully and is plagued by flashbacks—her father’s party, the car crash, and vivid, unsettling visions that hint at something beyond ordinary memory. She suspects that Stefan is not truly who he appears to be, and she clings to the possibility of a Capgras delusion, a rare psychological condition that can manifest after brain injury or memory loss. Dr Zachman advises more tests and suggests that Gina revisit the wrecked car in the auto shop, hoping to unlock forgotten details.

Meanwhile, Daniel and Kate return to their own apartment to find their neighbor in the hallway, visibly disturbed. The neighbor’s wife watches him through a crack in the door, and the moment’s tension hints at a larger, unseen danger threading through the building.

Gina’s investigation deepens at the auto shop, where she again confronts the photo and the mirrored sense of self. She then visits John at the American Embassy and shows him the picture. His worry grows as he senses something unsettling in his daughter’s narrative. Later, he discovers the mirror in the Embassy’s men’s room broken on the floor, confirming that the day’s strange events may touch even the most official spaces.

The tension escalates when Kate returns home to discover that Daniel is not there. As she peers into the hallway mirror, she encounters a shadowy version of her own house. A woman who looks exactly like her enters the bathroom and murders Kate, a chilling moment that intensifies the sense that multiple realities or copies are intruding into their world.

Back with Gina, she reaches a subway station with the photograph in hand. A passerby slips into her path, causing the photo to fall to the rails. She risks the train’s approach to recover it, narrowly avoiding catastrophe and continuing to piece together the day’s puzzles. A visit to her father reveals that the doctor has shared his concerns about Stefan’s changing demeanor. He and Gina exchange a telling moment when she shows him the photo, and his quiet response—“Maybe it’s not me”—kicks off a darker thread about identity and perception.

Gina phones Stefan to check on him, but there is no answer. She returns to his flat, only to find it abandoned and still, the air thick with a sense of pursuit. The familiar leak in the ceiling intensifies her unease as she investigates the attic and discovers Stefan dead, his head crushed against a pipe. In a moment of panic, Gina calls John for help, but a shadowy figure behind him disrupts the call, and the line goes dead.

Gina bolts from the apartment in a desperate bid for safety. A knock at the door and the sound of someone trying to force it open escalate the danger as a figure who resembles Stefan steps into the room. She escapes into the night, ending up in a phone booth where she reaches Daniel. Through their conversation, Daniel realizes that Gina is describing something that is all too close to home—her own house. The lines blur, and he hangs up, only to discover the apartment’s floor littered with shattered mirror shards.

When Gina finally returns to her own building, the night watchman gives her a spare key, but she refuses to have a duplicate, insisting she already has another set somewhere. Inside her flat, she finds the dead body of a herself, a ghastly tableau that forces the long-suppressed memories to surge forward. She remembers coming home to a terrifying moment that prompted her to place a plastic bag over a real Gina’s head—a memory that had been intentionally hidden. The truth lands with crushing weight as she looks up to see her father, John, standing on the sidewalk, looking up at her with questions he cannot voice.

The film closes on a chilling resolution: Mirror Gina is seen studying x-rays that reveal her own Situs Inversus, suggesting that the patient from the opening scene—and others—are being replaced by doppelgangers from the opposite side of the mirror. Daniel arrives at the hospital to find Gina altered beyond recognition, realizing that she has indeed been replaced just as Stefan was. Daniel flees in fear, while Mirror Gina climbs into her car and smiles, driving toward an unknown destination with a quiet, unsettling calm.

This tale threads memory, identity, and fear through a hall of mirrored selves, where the body’s anatomy is not the only thing that is inverted; the very sense of self is thrust into question as people around Gina begin to mirror a hidden, other side of reality.