Fragile (2005)★★★☆☆

This movie didn’t quite land for me. There was a lot about it that I liked, but the horror part of it was…lacking. Actually, there was quite a bit lacking. So it didn’t end up a terrible movie, but it’s not great.

(Probably spoilers) Let’s start with Amy. I know there’s a nursing shortage these days. Was there a similar shortage in 2005? It seems odd to me to hire someone from another country (an American nurse for an English hospital) for a hospital that’s closing within a few weeks.

And don’t get me wrong, I like Calista Flockhart. I thought she did great in this movie! I’d totally watch her in other scary movies! But her whole personality is essentially “traumatized by a previous death of a child under her care.” We don’t even really get more details around that (not that we need explicit detailing of a kid’s death, but it’s talked about so briefly in such vague terms).

I did like Maggie, though her whole personality is “orphan girl in a sick kid’s ward of a hospital” who’s ostensibly dying (really, at one point Amy is talking about how Charlotte only appears to people who are dying, and she mentions Susan, the previous nurse who died, and then says “And Maggie, who, you know…”). I think the most believable part is the sweet relationship between Amy and Maggie, even though it does seem to be built SUPER fast.

So that’s all well and good, and there’s definitely some creepy supernatural stuff happening, but once we actually get to see Charlotte…I literally laughed out loud. Honestly, it was just too much. The rest of this movie felt pretty subtle, the performances were good (even the kids were great!), there was some creepy stuff happening, and then there was Charlotte. She felt like a monster from a different, much more campy film (like 13 Ghosts, maybe?).

The small “reveal” about Charlotte wasn’t all that interesting and didn’t really change the trajectory of the story, and then the scene with Amy on the stretcher was also a bit much (I guess thanks for the foreshadowing earlier, though?). I DID like the final scene, though. I thought that was well placed.

Anyway, I wouldn’t recommend against watching this movie. It was entertaining and definitely had its creepy moments. But there were a few parts of it that just didn’t quite fit with the rest of it, and kept me from rating this any higher.