31 Years Later: How Nine Inch Nails’ ‘Broken’ Blurs the Line of Fiction and Reality for a...

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What was the first movie that disturbed you? The movie that got under your skin so bad its images haunted your nightmares. A movie where the mention of its title makes you shudder and cringe. A good movie, but you never want to watch it again. Being a huge horror fan, blood and gore doesn’t shock me much. My idea of cozy is curling up with my dog and watching a good horror movie, like The Exorcist. Very few movies scare or disturb me. But when I stumble upon a movie that truly shakes me or disgusts me, it’s something I never forget. For me, one of those movies is Nine Inch Nails’ Broken.

Released in 1993 by Nine Inch Nails mastermind Trent Reznor and Coil’s Peter Christopherson, the movie is a companion piece to the 1992 Broken EP. The record was a response to Reznor’s then-label TVT and former boss Steve Gottlieb. After the success of 1989’s Pretty Hate Machine the label pressured Reznor to create a similar album. Wanting to re-create the success of that album, TVT refused to release anything else Reznor gave them. Not wanting to compromise his music, Reznor demanded his contract be terminated; his request was ignored.

This didn’t stop Reznor. Instead, he recorded his next project in secret under various pseudonyms to avoid interference from the label. The music was markedly different from Reznor’s debut album. This was harsh, aggressive, ugly, and intense. There were no catchy songs and radio-friendly singles here. Reznor knew the label would hate it, but that was the point.

Reznor and TVT finally reached an agreement in 1992 that allowed Nine Inch Nails to sign to a different label, while TVT still profited from a small number of sales. Freed from his contact, Reznor presented Broken to Interscope Records, who offered him a new record deal, complete artistic freedom, and his own record company: Nothing Records. Along with the EP, Reznor envisioned a short film centered around the songs and linking them together visually. He teamed up with Christopherson to make the Broken movie. Featuring the EP’s music videos, the movie is shot like an amateur snuff film where an unsuspecting victim is kidnapped, forced to watch the videos, tortured, and killed by a masked assailant.

Christopherson intended the piece to be “a commentary on the existence of snuff movies and people’s obsession with them.” The movie was so violent, repulsive, and in poor taste, that Reznor changed his mind and decided against releasing it. But before shelving it, he shared the tape amongst his friends with certain parts edited out to identify the source of any leaks if they happened. It didn’t take long for poorly dubbed versions to be circulated in the underground scene. So, who leaked it? Reznor pins it on the Butthole Surfers’ Gibby Haynes.

And so, the legend of the Broken movie was born. You didn’t know if it actually existed. It was this mysterious, elusive tape many people claimed to have seen, but few could find unless you stumbled upon it in an obscure video store. It only added to Nine Inch Nails’ mythos. Reznor was already infamous for recording in the house where the Tate-LaBianca murders took Place. He was making films as well? Stories about the tape’s existence would be passed throughout the music scene for years adding to the legend of the movie that was so despicable even Reznor refused to release it.

When the internet exploded, it continued to be passed around via peer-to-peer networks. Still, many people hadn’t seen it until a strange incident in 2006. A DVD version of the film was uploaded onto The Pirate Bay by an unknown user called seed0. It even included the oft-missing “Help Me I’m In Hell” video. Many suspected Reznor was behind the leak considering the movie’s high quality and hints he dropped about its release. On his blog The Spiral, Reznor wrote “Happy Holidays! This one is a guilt-free download. (shhhh – I didn’t say that out loud). If you know what I’m talking about, cool.” For many, this would mark seeing the entire movie for the first time, myself included.

I was too young to see or know about Broken when it was first released. I learned about its existence 15 years later sitting in my college dorm room bored out of my mind. I was on a Nine Inch Nails binge, spending my quiet Saturday night watching all of their videos. Eventually, I reached Broken. Growing up I loved learning about urban legends, trying to dissect their origins, and wondering if there was any truth behind them. Even now I still enjoy getting lost in a good creepypasta. I thought the legend behind the movie was fascinating. What other artist would create a shocking movie based on their videos? Being a horror movie buff, I thought how bad could it be? I tracked down a copy and gave it a watch. I was not prepared for what I saw.

Broken was so disturbing, I didn’t finish it. I made it as far as “Happiness in Slavery” before I gave up. It’s only 20 minutes long but it’s so unnerving and uncomfortable, it felt like three hours. The realism of the snuff scenes and the excessive gore unnerved me in ways I didn’t expect. This wasn’t the cheap thrills of a typical horror movie. This felt real. Broken was so visceral, so raw it got under my skin. It was like witnessing a crime and wondering when the killer would come for me next. Those bloody images were burned into my memory after one viewing. I couldn’t even listen to the EP without envisioning the bloody gore of the movie. The flashbacks alone were enough to keep me from watching it again for another 10 years.

Much like everyone else in 2020, I was stuck in the house, alone. Reeling from two major losses, I was depressed, unmotivated, and bored out of my skull. Once again, I fell into a deep Nine Inch Nails binge. I listened to Reznor’s entire catalog, including his film scores. As I made my way through albums, DVDs, bootlegs, and videos, I knew I was getting closer to Broken. Just the thought of it put my stomach in knots. But I couldn’t put it off any longer. It was time to rewatch the movie and see if it was as horrific as I remembered.

Revisiting the movie, it’s still fucked up, but at least I finished it. It’s an uncomfortable experience. Watching this person being stabbed, defecated on, and hacked into pieces for someone’s pleasure is truly sickening. The amateur quality makes it easy to forget you’re watching Nine Inch Nails videos. The footage is so fuzzy, it allows your imagination to run wild as you try to figure out what’s happening on screen. It’s not fun to watch, yet I appreciate the movie for how effective it is. It’s that rare movie that made me feel real fear, the kind that makes you afraid to leave your house. A fear I don’t wish to experience again.

The music videos don’t even provide a respite; they only add to the tension and keep you on edge. It’s an onslaught of depravity, blood, and violence that only gets worse. “Pinion,” wherein someone is bound, gagged, and waterboarded, manages to be unsettling without any gore. “Help Me I’m In Hell,” is claustrophobic and uncomfortable voyeurism. “Wish” is a chaotic performance video full of anger and destruction that ends with each Nine Inch Nails member succumbing to a ravenous mob. Then there’s “Happiness in Slavery.”

Featuring performance artist Bob Flanagan sacrificing himself to a machine for unspeakable pleasure, it remains their most extreme video. Full of pricked flesh, rotting meat, and blood it’s stomach churning, but it’s no comparison to the rest of the movie. Even Reznor said, “the Broken movie makes ‘Happiness in Slavery’ look like a Disney film.” It’s one of those videos that is so twisted and gross you want to look away, but you keep watching because you won’t see anything like it again.

The movie ends with “Gave Up,” and no, this isn’t the version featuring a fresh-faced Marilyn Manson. It’s the chaotic climax where the killer massacres his victim. He burns him with a blowtorch, castrates him, pulls out his heart, takes a big bite out of it, and rubs his face in the blood splatter. It’s the epitome of torture porn. Meanwhile, a police officer slowly makes his way through the killer’s hideout stumbling upon the rotting corpses of his past victims. This is the hardest part to watch. My stomach still aches watching the horrifying violence unfold. “Happiness in Slavery” isn’t an easy watch either, but I’d rather watch this video ten times instead of watching the entire Broken movie again.

Admittedly, the Broken movie has lost some of the mystique it had back in 1993. We know it’s not a snuff film. No one died making it. We know the history behind it, how it was leaked, and how it was made. You can spot the dummy in certain parts. It’s easy to find and watch now. Yet its legendary status keeps growing. It hasn’t been officially released and most likely never will. Reznor tried posting it on Vimeo in 2013 and 2014. It was swiftly removed both times due to its excessive violence. It was then uploaded to the Internet Archive in 2016 where, shockingly, it remains. The movie can also be found via a hidden link on the Nine Inch Nails website. It remains a frequent topic of conversation when discussing Nine Inch Nails.

It’s a film that, while effective, even its creators were uncertain about. Both Reznor and Christopherson had reservations about the film. A year before he died in 2010, Christophersen expressed regret about the movie. Though he felt the movie was obviously fake, the low-quality copies made it hard to determine this, so people started believing it was a real snuff movie.

“[It] was never my intention to bring harm to people,” he told The Wire. “I do think people can be harmed seeing things, especially unexpectedly, that put them in the position of empathizing with someone being tortured and murdered. That’s a hard thing to watch. I guess it’s interesting that it’s achieved a certain notoriety. But to me, because truth has always been pretty important to me, I think that the way Hollywood presents horror … actually encourages kids to go, ‘Yeah, that was fucking awesome, man, you could see their eyes popping out.’”

Nearly 30 years later, the Broken movie holds up surprisingly well. Most shock art from decades past loses its edge. But the movie is still horrifying, nauseating, and disturbing. It still gets a visceral reaction from you. Not only is it extreme, it exposes a seedy side of society you hope doesn’t exist. It shows us this dark underbelly of life most are morbidly curious about, but unlike most horror movies that safety net of separating truth from fiction is constantly blurred. That’s what makes it scary. We know the film is a work of fiction, yet it plays with the realms of reality in a way where we forget that. Broken shows us the dark side of people we try to ignore and unapologetically shoves it in our faces.

The movie also represents a time when rock music was shocking and dangerous. This is the era where kids got in trouble for wearing Cradle of Filth and Marilyn Manson shirts. Where rock stars were larger than life and could freely create their mythos. In today’s world of internet sleuths and chronically online folks, rumors and urban legends are debunked instantly. Rock stars are no longer mysterious thanks to social media where their every thought and action is readily available at your discretion. On top of this, rock music isn’t as popular with mainstream audiences as it was in the 1990s. Most rock artists fly under the radar and the acts that do crossover are usually safe and audience friendly.

Broken is such a weird, fascinating piece of Nine Inch Nails history. It’s not fun to watch and it will make you uncomfortable, but it’s something you have to experience to understand why it’s so terrifying. There’s nothing else like this movie. It’s a unique piece of art that shows how Reznor is a rare breed who won’t compromise his music and vision. He does what he wants with little concern for what others will think. With Broken, he pushed the boundaries of good taste and his comfort to create a movie that still shakes you to your core. Despite knowing its history, recognizing the practical effects, and how it was made, Broken remains a movie that fills me with dread.

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