Feeling a bit wuff? Well then, ‘The Breed’ may just be the film for you.
We open with a young couple on a yacht having a super time in the wide blue sea. They spot an island and decide to have a look - Huge mistake! While the bloke ties up the boat the girl runs off to find a bar but instead finds a big fence with ominous looking equipment poking out from within. She heads off but is soon chased by an unknown assailant and is quickly caught and pulled off camera by an unseen but snarling attacker.
We then cut to a group of college kids in a seaplane heading towards the same island. We learn a rich yuppie type has inherited the house that some of them holidayed in as kids, and they’ve brought some friends along for some pre-exam partying. After some unnecessary but highly enjoyable frolicking about in bikinis we get down to business as a blonde hottie gets nipped by a stray dog. A medical student tells her she will be OK as rabies will take a week to develop, but she’s soon getting horny and ‘feeling great’ which is usually movie shorthand for ‘possessed by monsters’.
The bloodied bloke from the yacht appears to warn them that ‘the dogs don’t want you here’ before being mercilessly chomped by a pack of mutts that look more ‘Crufts’ than junkyard. The kids take refuge in their cabin, after one gets an arrow in the leg from a friend who’s not so much ‘Green Arrow’ as ‘Crap at Archery’. The kids recall a local attack dog school (on a deserted island?) but it was closed down after a rabies outbreak - could these be refugee mutts driven insane by a strain of rabies? And why are the dogs drawn to the bitten girl, even after she puts on clothes and starts to get all weird?
These are some smart poochies and once they send the seaplane out to sea they terrorise the kids as they try to outsmart the ferocious Fidoes. As you’d expect the kids start to get picked off in a variety of dog based methods including an inventive ‘death by merry-go-round’. Soon we are down to three survivors and they manage to get an old car working - where better to head than the dog experiment laboratory? Who will survive and will the bitten maintain their ‘doggy instincts’ and will they be house trained?
‘The Breed’ is a workmanlike thriller with nothing new to say but it’s still good fun all the same. The premise is slight with the synopsis basically being ‘sexy kids fight killer dogs’ but you can’t say it is aimed at the high brow market. The cast are mostly unknowns with only Michelle Rodriguez being a familiar face and indeed body. This works well as you’ve no idea who is likely to survive given the low star profiles on offer.
The threat level is mild throughout with a severe biting the worst fate offered. To get in the range of the jaws a few unlikely scenarios are worked into the script with a handy zip line offering plenty of dangling opportunities. The origins of the threat are barely touched upon with a rack of test tubes offered as definitive proof of evil scientists at work.
The dogs themselves seem well trained but lack any real evil or frothing jaws. They take a few hits themselves with a few hot dogs thinning their numbers. Obviously they can’t hurt real dogs so their actual deaths happen off camera with whines and whelps dubbed on to show it’s one up for the good guys.
This was a fast paced 90 minutes and it certainly kept my interest. The film offered mild peril, some bikinied lovelies and a few inventive deaths - you could do a lot worse!
THE Tag Line - Doggone It’s OK! 68%
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