Fragile is a 2004 Spanish English-language horror film that is deluded into believing that it is set on the Isle of Wight. Set in a closing children's hospital in Berkshire - no, apparently this fictional hospital is on the Isle of Wight despite being blatantly Berkshire - the story concerns haunting events. A forgettable film that is decidedly mediocre, it successfully tells a predictable story reasonably well but gets every detail about the Island wrong. Both the writer and director are Spanish and not from the Isle of Wight, and from the number of details they have got wrong seem unlikely to have ever visited the Island before making the film. The most memorable parts of the film take place in the first few minutes as the story is set up, with the film rapidly deteriorating once the opening credits end.

The story begins with a news report of a train accident, supposedly on the Island, in which at least 10 people have been killed and 35 injured. This involved stock footage of a train accident that wasn't on the Isle of Wight - it happened at a busy junction which, as the Island's line is single-tracked, doesn't exist on the Island. The train was of a standard loading gauge, which definitely would not fit through the Island Line tunnel. This report mentions that the Island's main hospital is 'St James'¹ but the film itself is set in the fictional 'Mercy Falls Children's Hospital', which is in the process of being decommissioned and was due to have been completely closed, only for this closure to be delayed by the accident. Only eight children remain. The film begins with the arrival of a new night nurse - Ally, no sorry, Amy - played by Ally McBeal actress Calista Flockhart.

A Fox, a Chicken and Sack of Grain

The Ferry To The Isle of Wight Is Something Quite Unique
- 'The Ferry to the Isle of Wight', Tony Malo

A ferry is fundamentally a straightforward means of transportation, simpler than a bus or train as typically there are only two stops: where you alight and where you disembark. Just as a passenger getting on, for instance, a double-decker Southern Vectis bus going to Newport won't find themselves on a National Express coach heading to London mere seconds later, the way a ferry works is that passengers go aboard, stay on that ferry until they reach their destination, and then get off. Despite being so uncomplicated, the filmmakers appear to have struggled with the concept of a ferry as a way to get from A to B without going via C, D, C again, D again, E, back to A, F and finally G.

Establishing the film's setting on the Isle of Wight by showing the main character on, and then leaving, the ferry makes sense. All this simple sequence requires is that the character stays on the same ferry until disembarking, and there aren't any ludicrous inconsistencies. Unfortunately this is not the case for the ferry sequence in this film, which is shown during the opening credits. What happens in this sequence is that the audience is shown:

1. A WightLink car ferry travelling from Portsmouth to Fishbourne
2. The Red Osprey Red Funnel car ferry travelling south from Southampton to East Cowes.
3. The Red Osprey Red Funnel car ferry north of where it was in the previous shot, now next to Fawley, presumably travelling from East Cowes to Southampton, with Nurse Amy on board.
4. Amy disembarking the Red Osprey in East Cowes and meeting Roy.
5. Amy being driven along Ryde Pier from WightLink's foot passenger ferry from Portsmouth.
6. Amy being driven along the Military Road outside Freshwater, heading away from the Yarmouth ferry terminal.

The best way for this sequence to make sense² is for Amy � who does not have a car - to cross the Solent nine times instead of just once, with the crossing time taking between 10 and 55 minutes depending on route. Assuming every service runs on time³ and that she leaves Portsmouth at 8am on a weekday, at 2022 timings and prices, the way for her to make this journey is as follows:

Amy leaves Portsmouth Harbour at 8.00am and arrives in Fishbourne at 8.45am in time to catch the same ferry back to Portsmouth - leaving Fishbourne at 9.00am, arriving back in Portsmouth at 9.45am (cost �14.40 each way). She would then be in time to catch a train from Portsmouth Harbour to Southampton Central leaving at 10.23am and arriving at 11.07am, (�11.90). Assuming she is in luck and that Red Funnel are operating the Red Osprey rather than either of her sister ships, she would take the 12.00noon ferry from Southampton to East Cowes, returning back to Southampton from East Cowes at 1.30pm and then going from Southampton back to East Cowes at 3.00pm, arriving at 4.00pm in order to drop off her bag with Roy before getting back on the 4.30pm ferry and arriving back in Southampton around 5.30pm, with each crossing costing �11. She would then catch the 6.04pm train from Southampton Central back to Portsmouth Harbour (�9 as outside peak times) arriving at 6.54pm, in plenty of time for the 7.20pm catamaran to Ryde Pier which arrives at 7.42pm (�17.60). There she meets Roy again and drives down the pier, presumably to take the 8.15pm hovercraft to Southsea (�20.80), arriving at Southsea at 8.25pm with just enough time to get the 8.39pm train from Portsmouth & Southsea station to Southampton Central, arriving at 9.38pm, changing to the train to Brockenhurst at 9.51pm, arriving at 10.05pm and finally getting the train from Brockenhurst at 10.18pm arriving at Lymington Pier at 10.29pm (�18.20). Unfortunately she would then have missed the last ferry and so would have to continue her journey the following day, leaving Lymington at 5.30am next morning and arriving in Yarmouth on the Island at 6.10am after spending another �14.40, getting back into Roy's car and driving along the Military Road.

For Amy to cross the Solent (in 2022) in the way that appears in Fragile's opening credits would take nine ferry crossings, five trains, almost 24 hours to complete and at a cost of �164.70.

Plot

A train crash has happened offstage, which means that the Mercy Falls Children's Hospital cannot close on schedule and still has children inside. Susan the night nurse is terrified when a child's legs inexplicably break while the boy is lying perfectly still and being x-rayed, and so quits with immediate effect. Amy is the replacement night nurse and arrives in the hospital where there are eight lung case children left. The old Victorian hospital is having everything removed and packed up around them, and one floor of the hospital � the second floor - has been closed off entirely since 1959.

At the hospital Amy encounters spooky children and vaguely sinister nurses who do not have umbrellas, and everyone evades her questions. Amy � who is as fragile as the title - has a sad backstory which involves the heavy use of sad music while she stares at lonely coat hangers, and she also has nightmares, takes pills and gazes slowly out the window. As a child she called her blanket Mr Sleepy. Other members of staff keep coming up to her and saying things like 'Is this your first job since it happened?' and 'I read your file' � which surely is against Data Protection Regulations - and even 'I didn't know you were American' � which makes you question the quality of HR's record keeping in any case.

Maggie, the only child to really feature in the film, warns Amy of the 'mechanical girl' called Charlotte who lives on the decommissioned second floor, which makes spooky noises at night. Charlotte communicates through the use of old wooden blocks with the alphabet on. Told that Charlotte is an urban legend in the hospital who the children inside have been discussing for many years, nevertheless Amy experiences creaking and breaking noises at night. The lift has a mind of its own, violently going to the second floor with Amy inside when it should be going to the ground (0) floor, even though it had the second-floor button removed⁴.

As the hospital is closing all the phones have been disconnected (apart from in the scene in which this detail has been forgotten), yet mobile reception is terrible, meaning that everyone in the hospital is cut off from the rest of the world.

How will children attached to ventilators brush their teeth? How do you know when a kiss is a love kiss? What is Amy's tragic backstory? Is it true that only those who are dying are able to see Charlotte?

Sometimes it's better not to ask.
- Dialogue from the film

Dramatis Personæ

Calista Flockhart is best known for playing the titular character in Ally McBeal (1997-2002) and had a recurring role as Cat Grant in Supergirl (2015-21). Elena Anaya, who only appears in the indoor scenes, has had a very successful career in Spain and some Hollywood roles and had appeared the previous year along with Richard Roxburgh in Van Helsing in which he played Dracula and she one of his brides. Gemma Jones had appeared in essentially the same matron role - Madam Poppy Pomfrey - in the Harry Potter film series from 2002. Colin McFarlane played Commissioner Loeb in the first two of the Dark Knight trilogy (2005-08) while Michael Pennington played Moff Jerjerrod, Death Star commander, in Return of the Jedi. Ivana Baquero, who briefly appears as Mandy, has had an impressive career as in her following film she starred as the main character in the phenomenal Pan's Labyrinth (2006).

Despite the film being set on the Isle of Wight, none of the characters sound as if they were raised there, with Spanish being the dominant accent.

Making

There is a making of documentary on the film's DVD release that is predominantly in Spanish and fails to mention the Isle of Wight once. This confirms that the interior sets were made in Barcelona, where the film studio was based, with the hospital exterior being Bearwood House just outside Reading. The director was Jaume Balaguer=F3 and writer Jordi Balagueró. The director has said (translated into English) that 'Fragile is a film about a woman. About a nurse who is fragile both physically and emotionally.' Calista Lockhart was attracted to the film as she felt it was a scary psychological horror.

Outside the opening sequence, at 27 minutes in there's a short location scene filmed on the Island at Ryde's Union Street in which Susan the old night nurse wants to talk to a friend about her terrifying experiences.

Review

Outside the Isle of Wight connection, Fragile is a film that isn't bad, just not overly memorable one way or the other. Despite being a low-budget film it didn't quite make its production budget back and so counts as a minor box office bomb, but the director has gone on to make several more horror films, particularly the REC series (2007-14). The film does include its own animated sequence in which the children watch a specially-made cartoon-in-a-film version of Sleeping Beauty. This is well done, even if the reason the children are entertained via an Old film that is shown by a projector is to establish that there is a film projector in the hospital that helpfully can be used to view old film material dating from 1959 that the heroes discover when investigating the supernatural activities.

The film, which is rated 15, easily passes the Bechdel Test. It is just frustrating that the film makes so many basic errors about the Isle of Wight. For instance, the air ambulance that appears in the film is in completely different livery to the Hampshire & Isle of Wight Air Ambulance. A terrible train accident has supposedly taken place with the loss of multiple lives, yet the scene set on the pier shortly after shows the trains still running, which seems unlikely until after a full enquiry and investigation. Also when the characters are driving down the pier, so surrounded by water, the scenes out the window show countryside.

'Mercy Falls' is supposedly an old Victorian hospital, but at that time hospital names were chosen to make a political statement. So for example in Ryde there was the Royal Isle of Wight County Hospital, named to emphasise that the Island is a county in its own right and by highlighting the Royal connection with Queen Victoria, have one-up on Winchester's Hampshire County Hospital on the mainland. Similarly, Ventnor had the Royal National Hospital � again named to convey a grand sense of importance. Hospitals might be named after the patron who paid for them, such as the Frank James Hospital or Arthur Webster Memorial Hospital. The main hospital on the Island is named after St Mary. The name 'Mercy Falls', especially as there is no waterfall, settlement or even road named 'Mercy' on the Island, is a blatantly ridiculous name for a hospital, similar to 'Compassion Fails' or 'Apathetic Care'.

We are told in the news report that the train crash happened near the old hospital, which leads viewers to speculate whether the accident was caused by the spirit behind the hospital's haunting, yet this angle � and indeed the fatal train crash itself - is never mentioned again. The only unique selling point about this film that differentiates it from other, similar stories is that it is set on the Isle of Wight, and by doing this so badly it isolates the only community with a vested interest in seeing the film.

At least the film doesn't feature the Koan.