BREEDER Review: Eugenics, Capitalism and Human Obedience Collide in Dark Survival Horror
BREEDER Review: Eugenics, Capitalism and Human Obedience Collide in a Darkly Funny Survival Horror
There is something uniquely unsettling about taking an idea we readily accept when discussing animals and simply applying the same logic to human beings. Select the right traits. Find the proper mate. Control the diet. Demand obedience. Eliminate undesirable characteristics. Repeat until you’ve produced exactly what you want.
That disturbing proposition sits at the center of BREEDER, Alex Goyette’s darkly comedic survival horror film about a successful dog breeder who decides her expertise shouldn’t be limited to poodles.
Daniel Doheny stars as Russell, an intelligent and highly educated young researcher fascinated by bees. His work examines not only how they function but the ways their social structures can reflect aspects of human society. Unfortunately, intelligence and interesting research don’t necessarily translate into financial success.
Russell needs funding.
Enter Patty.
Played with an immediately commanding presence by Dot-Marie Jones, Patty has built her reputation breeding champion poodles. She understands selection, discipline, nutrition and pairing animals to produce desirable traits. Now she’s decided to leave dog breeding behind and apply those principles to something considerably more disturbing.
Human beings.
There isn’t some elaborate laboratory hidden beneath Patty’s property. No genetic engineering. No futuristic machine manufacturing perfect people. Patty’s methodology is frightening precisely because of how primitive it is.
She intends to selectively breed people the old-fashioned way.
It’s an outrageous premise, and BREEDER knows it, allowing Goyette to move between survival horror and dark comedy without losing sight of the uglier ideology underneath the joke.
Eugenics isn’t a new concept, either historically or within genre filmmaking. Humanity has repeatedly produced movements obsessed with supposedly desirable traits, racial superiority and the belief that certain people should determine which characteristics deserve to continue into another generation. BREEDER takes that ideology and filters it through the language of competitive animal breeding.
Patty isn’t simply looking for people. She’s looking for traits.
That makes Russell particularly valuable.
But one of the smarter aspects of the screenplay is that Russell’s intelligence hasn’t automatically made his life successful. He can attend a prestigious institution, possess an exceptional mind and pursue sophisticated research while still facing a question familiar to anyone trying to build a career around something others don’t consider financially valuable:
What’s the return on investment?
Russell’s circumstances give BREEDER another interesting layer. In a capitalist society, intellectual accomplishment and economic accomplishment aren’t necessarily the same thing. Someone can possess extraordinary knowledge and still struggle for resources, while someone with considerably less intellectual ability can accumulate enough wealth to wield enormous influence over everyone around them.
Russell’s intelligence therefore becomes both an asset and a vulnerability. Patty sees value in him, but not necessarily the kind of value Russell wants anyone to see.
The film becomes particularly interesting through Russell’s interactions with Patty’s family, especially her daughter Ainsley, played by Maddie Phillips.
Their dynamic helps BREEDER move beyond its initial captive-survival setup and into questions surrounding family, expectation, failure and what happens when parents begin viewing their children’s relationships as extensions of their own accomplishments.
Within Patty’s worldview, finding the “right” partner isn’t simply about attraction or companionship. It’s another selection process.
Choose correctly and you’ve succeeded.
Choose incorrectly and you’ve failed.
That’s where Russell becomes an important counterpoint to Patty’s philosophy. His intelligence doesn’t lead him toward the conclusion that humanity can be perfected through increasingly rigid selection. Instead, he continually recognizes something Patty’s entire system attempts to eliminate: people are different.
Those differences are part of being human.
It’s a simple idea, but an important one within a film about reducing people to desirable and undesirable characteristics.
Goyette also understands that a premise this bizarre needs room to be funny. BREEDER is dark — frequently very dark — but its humor prevents the material from becoming an exhausting exercise in captivity and cruelty. The movie instead develops an odd personality somewhere between survival horror, social satire and a deeply dysfunctional family comedy.
Not every decision is completely believable, and there are moments when characters take actions that require the audience to give the film some latitude. Yet those moments never become significant enough to derail the story.
That’s important because BREEDER continually gives you a reason to want to see where this increasingly strange situation ends.
Jones is particularly well suited for Patty. Her physical presence and forceful personality make it easy to understand how this woman could control the environment around her, while the absurdity of her philosophy gives the performance opportunities to be funny without turning Patty into a harmless caricature.
Doheny has the more difficult job of grounding the insanity. Russell has to function as our entry point into this world while also convincing us that his intelligence is more than something the screenplay simply tells us about. His observations about people, society and the circumstances surrounding him help accomplish that.
Underneath all the madness, BREEDER has quite a bit on its mind.
Eugenics. Capitalism. Family expectations. Intelligence. Economic value. Relationships. Control. Obedience. The pressure to reproduce. Even the seemingly universal desire to classify people according to what they can provide becomes part of the film’s larger conversation.
It doesn’t explore every one of those subjects with enormous depth, nor does it need to. This is still a darkly funny survival horror movie about a champion poodle breeder deciding she can produce better human beings.
And sometimes that’s enough.
BREEDER ultimately works because it takes that ridiculous premise seriously enough to give it substance without becoming so serious that it drains the fun out of the movie.
Even when some of the characters’ choices stretch credibility, there isn’t much that completely pulls you away from wanting to see the story through. And when the film finally arrives at its conclusion, it doesn’t suddenly abandon the darkness that got it there.
That final note is important.
BREEDER doesn’t reinvent survival horror, but it doesn’t feel like another interchangeable captive thriller either. Its peculiar mixture of social commentary, family dysfunction, uncomfortable humor and human husbandry gives it an identity of its own.
It’s weird. It’s funny. It’s dark. And it’s a welcome change of pace.
3.5 out of 5
BREEDER opens in theaters October 28.
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