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December 20, 2021

Breeder (2020) Movie Review

Okay, this flick is even more recent than the last one I reviewed so I will definitely not spoil anything. Though, honestly, the further you get into the movie, the more predictable it becomes so you’d probably figure it out long before I could spoil it.

*shrug* It is what it is.

Breeder is about a mad scientist who’s trying to find a cure for the aging process. And yes, she sees aging as a disease, not a natural course of existence. That kinda gives you an idea of what we’re dealing with here. So she decides the best way to find just the right procedure is to kidnap young women and experiment on them via torture and…fertilization.

Interpret that anyway you want. All will be revealed by the end.

Thomas is the financial guy for this corporation and he’s keeping A LOT of secrets from his wife, Mia. Which, as any human will know, the more a mystery presents itself to us, THE MORE WE MUST SOLVE IT. This leads Mia to becoming part of the experimentations and discovering exactly what this corporation and mad doctor are up to in order to keep the human race young and beautiful.

Beauty is pain, so they say, but dayum…

 

That’s all I’m going to tell you.

The good things in this flick are the acting and the cinematography. Thomas, Mia, Dr. Ruben, and one of the doctor’s henchmen, The Dog (yes, that’s his character name) have the most screen time and are the more important players. I think Mia and The Dog are the most interesting and somewhat complementary. That may seem weird as The Dog is a misogynistic sadist and she’s a housewife/athlete with some unfulfilled kink desires. But they play off each other so well. I have to contribute that to the talents of Sara Hjort Ditlevsen and Morten Holst. Thomas and Dr. Ruben are a bit more cliché but it works for the storyline. Anders Heinrichsen and Signe Egholm Olsen play them beautifully, even when you want to punch them in the throat.

I would have to say that of all the captured women, the one who never speaks emotes more anguish and anger than any of the other victims. She’s pretty powerful, emotionally speaking. And the final shot of revenge against one of the henchmen is very satisfying to watch. No words, just animalistic brutality.

Does that make me a bit of a sadist, too? Maybe…

There is a scene at the end that absolutely made me weep but I can’t really tell you about it because that does give away a bit of the story. You’ll have to watch for yourself.

Every woman's POV at the OBGYN.

The cinematography is brilliant. While the suburb where most people live is pleasant and pretty, and the face of the corporation is enticing, the building where this experimentation is going on is appropriately disgusting. Dark, dank, filthy, claustrophobic, inescapable. It reflects Dr. Ruben’s mania, her henchmen’s brutality, and the victims’ hopelessness.

Once place where this movie fails is the pacing. It didn’t need to be an hour and forty-seven minutes. They could have cut out at least twenty minutes of scenery or running or meeting with investors for the project. I checked my watch twice during the viewing so that’s not a good sign. It’s almost expected for a movie to lose a viewer’s interest once (usually around the halfway mark) but consistently through every act? Less than optimal.

Another issue I had is the story. Some of the twists were predictable to a degree, others just made me scratch my head. The whole anti-aging procedure…I’m pretty sure there are easier and LEGAL ways to do what Dr. Ruben wanted. I don’t know if this was supposed to take place years before STEM cell research was even a thing or getting genetic material from women was taboo or illegal or what. I can’t remember for sure but I think people had smart phones so…that would mean present day.

That goes along with the “let’s just make this über extreme so people know how fucked up this is,” as if kidnapping women and hiring a sadist as their guard wasn’t enough to let us know. It screams of trying too hard, you know? Especially the garbage can reveal. Trust me on this one. *gag*

Overall, it’s a decent thriller with some horrific and gross elements. And just listening to the actors speak Danish is fun (I love listening to foreign languages which is why subtitles don’t bother me one bit). It’s nothing groundbreaking or spectacular, but it is a spectacle at times with great acting.

 

2 hatchets (out of 5)




 

 


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