Main cast: Michelle Rodriguez (Nicki), Oliver Hudson (John), Taryn Manning (Sara), Eric Lively (Matt), and Hill Harper (Noah)
Director: Nicholas Mastandrea
I’m a dog person, and The Breed boasts quite a number of cute killer dogs. They are easily the nicest thing about this movie, and it is pretty easy to root for them to kill the silly human beings too.
I am not sure how Wes Craven is dragged into being a producer for this movie, and I can only wonder whether blackmail, drugs, or coercion is involved. This is because this movie is quite the pits. Someone just decided to make a movie about dogs that bite and maul people, and someone else greenlit it, so here we are. We have two brothers – Matt the responsible one, and John the bad boy. The two of them clash quite often due to the differences in their personality, and it doesn’t help that Matt’s girlfriend Nikki is John’s ex. These three, along with John’s girlfriend Sara and the token black guy Noah head over to a cabin in an island, left to the brothers by a recently departed uncle.
They spend what seems like an eternity – about half an hour, actually – rehashing tedious, boring arguments and stuff. Finally, the dogs show up and guess who dies first.
The Breed is a movie that exists in a logic vacuum. These dogs are genetically engineered to be smarter and deadlier than the usual, and… apparently they are left all alone on that island? Then, who feeds the dogs? How did the dogs survive without cannibalizing one another? How did they manage to remain so well-groomed and cute? Maybe these are smart dogs that can cook, hunt, and use the shower? Why are these moron humans not trying harder to shoot these dogs? They have the weapons, but they just instead run around like headless chickens. Nicki is injured in the leg earlier in the story, but she has no problems doing acrobatic and vigorous things without even wincing. And on and on.
At the end of the day, this movie is all about dogs chomping down on boring one-dimensional clichés. That’s something I can normally get behind, but not when the resulting movie is this dreary, joyless thing.
