‘Breeder’: Perverted and Hilarious Horror Debut [Tribeca Review]
Is a film about a glory-hungry 20-something-year-old dork, eugenics, human trafficking, and incestuous voyeurism supposed to be this funny? This is the question you’ll have to wrestle with when you finally watch Alex Goyette’s foray into horror, Breeder, which premiered at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival. The film tells the story of a college student (Daniel Doheny) who has fumbled the bag on funding for his bee research. His desperation finds him visiting a mysterious poodle breeder (Dot-Marie Jones) at her isolated ranch. Patti offers to fill in the financial gaps for Russell with a catch: He has to breed with her daughter.
Over time, Breeder feels claustrophobic, quickly turning into a kidnapping horror flick in the vein of Black Phone, Fresh, or Split. But it’s the exposition that really sparkles. You learn enough about Russell to understand why he’d take Patti up on her insane offer. Amid conversations about the “male loneliness epidemic” and the manosphere, it’s especially intriguing to see horror movies like Breeder and last month’s Obsession fantastically illustrate the potential consequences of men feeling disenfranchised.
Still, unlike a lot of genre movies these days, the horror of Breeder isn’t just psychological, but ideological. It transcends the cat-and-mouse antics of the genre. Because whether you have kids or not, the idea of being forced to create them — emphasis on force — is deeply uncomfortable. Even the word “breeder” makes you feel affronted. Once a term in the anti-natalist movement, “breeder” has been co-opted by members of the queer community — both ironically by new-school gays and unironically by the old-school gays who weren’t interested in marriage equality or adoption access. The word “breeder” is inherently disdainful toward people, especially heterosexual people, who want to reproduce.
How Goyette toys with this idea feels cheeky and dangerous, especially in this era where the U.S. government is championing human reproduction over everything. What’s more is that the term “breeder” has long been associated with a different horror-comedy, namely Jonathan Swift’s 1729 essay “A Modest Proposal,” where he quips about feasting on babies to control population growth.
Even though she has a cannibalistic disregard for human life, Patti’s goal is the creation of it — especially breeding for intelligence. She’s openly a fan of eugenics, deciding to take the leap from breeding show dogs to breeding future scientists. Patti doesn’t just compel or browbeat Russell into taking her up on the offer to breed, but actively menaces him — which is where the horror really begins. Something that Jones does well is that you feel thoroughly menaced by her character, whether you’d be in the position of “stud” or the “bitch” that’s getting bred.
And while you feel bad for Patti’s daughters, Goyette also makes you fear them. There’s something animalistic about the girls and how they move in formation, like a pack of well-trained hounds. Seeing them run around in groups, from the house to the barn and back again, brings to mind the phrase “raised by wolves.”
As a battle of the wills between Russell and Patti and her daughters starts to unfurl, you feel the kind of uneasiness that makes your stomach roil. Because when you watch Goyette’s film, you have an idea of how it can go, but Breeder will zig where you thought it would zag. The visual beauty of the film also helps keep it engaging, from the shadowy nighttime corners of the poodle farm, to the stark country light that feels eerie in the daytime, to the sickly fluorescent lights of the bunker where Russell is being farmed for semen.
Jarryl Lim captures all the different moods of the film seamlessly, just as Goyette marries horror to humor. A movie about a selfish young man, an ambitious eugenicist, and their twisted, coerced bargain could have felt really dark. But if you’re anything like the crowd who sat in on the film’s Tribeca premiere, you’ll find yourself giggling against your will.
Like many of the current horror darlings these days, Goyette got his start as a YouTuber. See also the Philippou Brothers and Markiplier, as well as Kane Parsons and Curry Barker, whose films are dominating the box office. But more pertinently, like Zach Cregger and Jordan Peele, Goyette got his start in comedy. His first film, Expelled, was in this vein.
The comedy background seeps through tastefully — and undeniably, a huge part of the magic is Doheny and Jones playing off of each other. This smart-but-anxious college kid is trying and failing to fight back against a Miss Trunchbull type in a meeting of the minds. If you love to champion a problematic fave, go ahead and add Breeder to your watch list.
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Breeder
Summary
Breeder is so messed up, but Goyette’s debut is a delightful (and technically stunning) watch.
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