Breeder

Premiered at FrightFest 2020, Jens Dahl’s Breeder fixes tightly on greed and science and the hubris of meddling with what is inevitable, through misogyny, abuse and violence with a touch of kinkiness thrown in for good measure.

Mia (Sara Hjort Ditlevesen) is married to Thomas (Anders Heinrichsen) a moderately successful financier on the brink of major success and wealth via Dr Isabel Ruben (Signe Egholm Olsen). Dr Ruben has been experimenting with the retardation ion of aging with some success with a not properly trialled drug. A revealing TV interview set off Thomas’s radar and he becomes concerned about the project as too much is still unknown.

Mia meantime is training for the next Olympics hoping to ride in the equestrian events. Out training she bumps into an au pair Nika (Eeva Putro) pregnant and from whom Dr Ruben manages to get a hair sample. We next see Nika abducted, escape make her way back to Mia’s place and Thomas instead of taking her to the hospital takes her to Ruben’s research centre – a grimy old industrial site that Ruben has extorted out of Thomas.

Mia, suspicious, tracks Thomas to the site and watched on CCTV by Dr Ruben is captured by The Dog (Morten Holst) a misogynistic psychopath given full reign by Ruben to do indulge his perversions, so long as it doesn’t affect her experiments. Thrust into the hellhole Mia is incarcerated, stripped and branded. Thomas, now having got his wits about him, is allowed to meet Mia and they start to foment a plan to escape.

Skirting and flirting with the extreme end of the horror spectrum, Breeders does so with a sophisticated, deviant touch. As repulsive as some elements are there’s a thread of dark sexuality running through from the start when Thomas is incapable of a quickie initiated by Mia, who then dons her riding boots and pleasures herself while digging the spurs into her bum. It’s a theme that runs through to the more extreme and dangerous the deeper we get into the plot.

Unfortunately parallel to that is an ugly misogyny of female subjugation that borders on exploitation and the gratuitous. Its genuinely uneasy to watch these scenes and even dishing out Euripidean vengeance cannot properly balance them.

On a more practical level for all the blood, grime and bodily fluids the film is slickly edited with hues that for periods appear like silent era colour tinting. It works very well to enhance the unreality and horror of the situation.

More philosophically Sissel Dalsgaard Thomsen’s script skirts with the limits (or not) of science, the abuse of people for the vanity of others, and the involvement of high-finance, corporations and government. Some of the aforementioned is clear cut, other elements beg the question who is leading and the driving motives that Breeders leaves up in the air.

Breeder will be out available digitally and on Blu-ray from 15 February.