My first thought when I started watching this movie was “adopt, don’t shop.” This movie is going to be like Friday the 13th to me: that was (one of) the reasons I didn’t go to summer camp. Breeder will be perfect to scare people away from buying bred dogs when there are so many needing adoption.
The plot of Breeder is simple: Russell (Daniel Doheny) is a genius who is working on a plan to save bumblebees through gene editing. The problem is that because he doesn’t have his PhD., he can’t get the grants he needs to fund his program. He gets a letter from Patti (Dot-Marie Jones), a breeder of miniature poodles, offering him all the money he could need. He just has to come over for dinner. Once he arrives, Patti explains that she needs help with her own project: she has turned to breeding humans, and she wants him to be her new “stud.” Russell hesitantly agrees when Ainsley (Maddie Phillips), one of Patti’s five adopted daughters, explains she has a plot to fake the whole thing. Of course, things don’t go well and take a drastic turn.
Alex Goyette does an admirable job writing and directing his first feature film. The script could have just been random sex and gore, but it wasn’t. While I won’t give it away, the ending was odd and weirdly uncomfortable. It fit in well with the story, and it was a good, unexpected ending, but it left me feeling uncomfortable, which is the ultimate way to end a horror movie. No “happy ending” in the traditional sense. The film was a little dark, which may make it difficult to watch on your TV, but this is definitely worth going to the theater for.
The cast was great, especially Dot-Marie Jones, who does a beautiful job. She is at once commanding and threatening, and awkward enough that the few laughs the script had were somehow more uncomfortable because of Jones’ reaction. The daughters were a little bit underused (except Ainsley), but it kept the film running smoothly and prevented it from being a three hour epic, so it worked for me. For example, Manon (Isla Spencer), the youngest daughter, seemed to have been punished early on. We don’t know what for, and we don’t get a clear idea of what happened to her. It was weird to bring it up and then never mention it again.
This movie needed a trigger warning, because the sexual abuse was pretty intense and definitely unavoidable. But it was interesting because there was plenty of full frontal nudity, all men. The women did not get bare below the shoulders. It was a nice nod against the standard slashers of the 1980s.
Breeder is a creepy, unsettling film that doesn’t have much to do with dog breeding, but does have a lot to do with human breeding. It is the kind of thing that would be hard to define as a “comfort watch” because of all the sexual abuse in it. This is likely a “one and done” for me, personally – which suits me just fine, and it actually makes that scarier to me.
Breeder hits theaters on October 28th.
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