Broken (1993 film)

Broken
Unofficial DVD cover included with the DVD-version leak
Directed by	Peter Christopherson
Produced by	Trent Reznor
Written by	Trent Reznor
Starring	Trent Reznor Bob Flanagan
Music by	Trent Reznor
Release date	1993
Running time	20:10
Country	United States
Language	English

Broken (informally known as The Broken Movie) is a 1993 horror musical short film/long form music video filmed and directed by Peter Christopherson, based on a scenario by Trent Reznor, the founder of the industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails. The film is a companion piece to the band's 1992 EP Broken, featuring its songs and music and compiling its music videos (the exception being "Last" and the two hidden tracks). The movie, roughly 20 minutes in length, weaves Broken's four music videos together via a violent "snuff film" framing sequence, concluding with an otherwise unreleased video for the EP's final song "Gave Up," setting the conclusion of the film's frame story to the song. Due to its extremely graphic content, the Broken movie was never officially released, but was leaked as a bootleg which became heavily traded on VHS in the 1990s, and more recently via the Internet.

Trent Reznor once said that the Broken movie "...makes 'Happiness in Slavery' look like a Disney movie." While his comments about the movie have been cryptic at best, he makes no secret of the film's existence.

The film begins with a scene of a person being executed by hanging. The trap door opens and the person drops with a maniacal smile on his face.

The movie then cuts to footage of an amateur video, taken from inside a car going through various parts of a city (the backwards "n" from the Broken album cover and the title "broken" is shown superimposed as a glass overlay). The car goes from the middle-class suburbs to, literally, the other side of the tracks, into a shoddy industrial area, with a brief shot of a "Meat District" sign. The car approaches a young man on the sidewalk. Almost immediately, the young man is suddenly in a basement, tied with a seat belt to a chair and cleave gagged, while being forced to watch a television. The first video, "Pinion," begins to play.