Rent The Breeder (2011)

Spoilers follow ... - The Breeder review by NP

Sophie and Amy (Judy LeGal and Theresa Joy) are two young aid workers back-packing across the beautiful Caucasus Mountains. The characters are well written and played, and above all likeable. Flighty Amy, who could be grating, doesn’t take herself seriously. Even lines like “I’m used to eyes undressing me 24/7” are delivered more with humour than with the kind of casual arrogance sometimes found with extroverts in this type of film. The two girls, seem to be having such a good time in each others’ company that you really don’t wish them harm. And, knowing the kind of film this is from the title and publicity, you just know that is exactly what they are going to get.

The awkwardness about being a stranger in a foreign land is well conveyed here. However friendly – or not – the locals may be, there is the underlying feeling that the two girls don’t fit in here. As a result, the character of UN Major Palmer (a terrific Peter James Haworth) has a reassuring familiarity about him … you’d think. Equally, local Lasha (Giorgi Kipshidze , also excellent) seems to be helpful company when things start to get scary.

Amy disappears. She is kidnapped by a madman known as The Breeder, who is kidnapping girls and brainwashing them, making a blank canvas of them, so he can ‘recreate’ them in his image. The scenes in which this takes place are characteristically perverse – but it is what you don’t see that makes Amy’s ordeal so horrifying.

Then it all gets a bit weird. People who we think are friends turn out not be – or do they? Characters who were given reason to fear are revealed to virtuous after all – or are they? In a frenzied finale in which people appear to die, only to pop up and save the day before they are seemingly dispatched once more, events threaten to get ludicrous.

Luckily, the action is just about kept in check – although it bulges at the seams of reality – by director and writer Till Hastreiter, and what results is often a deliberately disorientating film (echoing the ordeal of The Breeder’s victims) that I had a good time watching. And, despite the suffering and horror on display – or maybe because of it – that’s a good thing, isn’t it? My score is 7 out of 10.