Director Rufus Norris had quite an opportunity in making his debut film, Broken. It’s enough to work off the back of a well-received book (in this case, by Daniel Clay), but a strong dramatic center contained within and, moreover, fantastic cast to surround it ensure something that should leave even the slightest impact. Any lack of experience be damned, I say.

I’m afraid that’s not the exact impression to be gleaned from Broken‘s second trailer, a bloodless and discordant assemblage that, we can hope, might just be selling its own product short. Despite a certain looseness, the main cast — Tim Roth, Cillian Murphy, Rory Kinnear, Robert Emms, and newcomer / star Eloise Laurence — all shine, even in this small form, and I think the story established is sufficient to pull me in on some purely dramatic level. (Even the mixed reviews do a decent job of establishing just why this might be effective for yours truly.) Don’t discount a slate of British Independent Film Award nominations!

Here’s the full trailer (via Empire), following our initial look:

Synopsis: Something terrible has happened in Hedge End, a small town in the south of England. Readers learn this fact immediately, when they discover that the novel’s occasional narrator, an 11-year-old girl named Skunk, is in a coma. Much of what follows is the story of how and why she got there, beginning with the very public humiliation and beating of her teenage neighbor, Rick Buckley, whom she thereafter thinks of as “Broken” Buckley (hence the title). Rick’s plight is the work of the awful Oswalds, a sociopathic family of losers and layabouts who are the bane of the neighborhood.

Broken will open in the UK this coming spring; a US release shouldn’t be far behind.

Does this preview leave a strong impression?