Atanaria
If you’ve ever thought, “Hey, getting stuck in a gondola on New Year’s Eve sounds like a party,” then Break might be the movie for you — that is, if you like your horror with a side of boredom and a soundtrack that sounds like it was stolen from a royalty-free YouTube channel.
Directed by Tigran Sahakyan, Break is a Russian survival thriller that dares to ask: What happens when five friends get trapped mid-air on a snowy mountain gondola with booze, bad decisions, and no way down? Spoiler alert: absolutely nothing interesting.
Let’s start with the premise, because it should be great. One-location thrillers can be tense, claustrophobic, and totally gripping — think Frozen (no, not the Disney one) or Buried. Unfortunately, Break manages to suck all the tension out of its premise like a vacuum cleaner running on low battery. The group’s efforts to escape are uninspired, the character dynamics are flatter than the dialogue dub, and the villainous turn by Roma (played by Mikhail Fillipov) feels like it came straight out of a cartoon — and not the good kind.
Oh, and about that English dub… oof. If you ever wanted to hear talented Russian actors sound like bored AI reading off a script, this is your moment. It’s not just bad — it’s immersion-breaking. Irina Antonenko as Katya might give a decent performance in the original Russian, but we’ll never know because the dub robs every scene of any emotional weight. Think The Blair Witch Project without the fear, the realism, or, well… anything.
Character motivations? Paper-thin. Katya wants to break up with her boyfriend, but we never find out why. Kirill, the aforementioned boyfriend, decides not to board the gondola because he forgot his bag. That’s the level of drama we’re working with here. And when the characters aren’t trying (and failing) to survive, they’re bickering in the most unconvincing way possible.
The cherry on top? The reason they’re stuck on the gondola is because the mountain staff… just don’t feel like checking the tracks. They literally take a different lift and call it a day. It’s not just lazy writing — it’s facepalm writing.
To be fair, the movie tries. There’s an attempt at conflict, some nods to survival psychology, and the occasional shot that reminds you this could have been a nerve-wracking thrill ride. But the execution is just so bland. The effects don’t sell the dizzying height, and not once did I get sweaty palms — which is kind of the bare minimum for this kind of movie.
In the end, Break feels less like a survival thriller and more like a cautionary tale about bad dubs, lazy screenwriting, and why not every cool premise deserves a feature film. If you’re craving chairlift suspense, go watch Frozen (again, not the singing snowman one). At least that one sticks the landing.
Our honest take : 1.5 out of 5 falling gondolas. Watch at your own risk — a “Break” you maybe shouldn’t take, for your own sake.
