Breeder Review

Breeder is a 2020 feature film directed by Jens Dahl.

Breeder is a film certainly not for the faint of heart. It is one that starts with a lot of promise for exploring the way to unlock the fountain of youth but slowly devolves into gruesome torture porn.

There is a lot of genuine promise in the opening act for this film. We have a lead character in Mia as portrayed by Sara Hjort Ditlevsen that has a solid amount of depth, living with her husband, who doesn’t seem to value her the way he should.

Besides that, we have said husband Thomas working with a new startup company that is claiming to have found a way to not only slow down the aging process but reverse it. With all of this, we have a lot of strong connecting pieces where the story can flow.

Once we enter into this facility where the research is happening, though, this is where any semblance of motivations, development or interesting research elements all seem to vanish, unfortunately. Things just get more and more brutal from then on.

It is at this point that it must be said that for those who do not enjoy films such as Saw or Hostel, then you will not have a good viewing experience with this film. While the production value of the piece is solid with crisp cinematography and sleek camera work, it doesn’t alleviate the imagery we are watching on screen.

There are films where throughout our lead is just having a terrible time. Think something like Ready or Not or even Die Hard, for example. In those films, we are still having an enjoyable experience because the lead has some degree of control and is not simply thrown from place to place and hurt in more gruesome ways.

That is the main issue here. It just feels like shock value and moments meant to elicit those stomach tightening responses for the simple sake of it. It just feels mean for far too long and gives our protagonists no sense of urgency or motivation besides just to avoid getting hurt more at that moment.

Had this been dialed back a bit more and the more interesting lead in plot point been more deeply explored, we would have had a better film to sit down to. As it is right now, though, the gory nature of the film, while highly effective, just holds back what could otherwise be a much more focused film with interesting social commentary.

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Cheers!

Daniel Hess

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