Breeder (2020)

 

"Danish Mad Gynaecologist Torture Porn"

There's plenty of social commentary in Jens Dahl's grim science fiction horror thriller as well, but if you go in with your expectations set at the above then chances are you won't be disappointed, especially if you're a fan of movies like Pascal Laugier's MARTYRS (2008) and Bustillo & Maury's L'INTERIEUR (2007). BREEDER, which can also fit into the 'Extreme EuroHorror' subgenre, is getting a UK Blu-ray release from Eureka after playing at last October's Frightfest.

Mad vet Dr Isabel Ruben (Signe Eghom Olsen) is researching ways to prolong life and has succeeded to the point where wealthy men are prepared to pay for her services. Unfortunately those services require her to kidnap women, inseminate them with her client's DNA and then harvest cells from the resultant baby to produce her youth serum. Mia (Sara Hjort Ditlevsen) discovers that her husband is helping fund the research and goes to investigate, and ends up as one of the test subjects herself.

Filled with brandings, beatings and women in cages forced to bear children, BREEDER starts off a little like Brandon Cronenberg's ANTIVIRAL with its clinical TV advertising and rich clientele before veering off into Pete Walker HOUSE OF WHIPCORD territory with its ineffectual male lead, ruthless villainess and general sense of hopelessness, before finally 'coming out' as a social commentary piece. There's a stark contrast between the sterility of people's homes and place of business compared with the grim and grimy 'factory' where the nuts and bolts of the biological processes are carried out.

There's no real attempt to explain the science of what is going on - there's talk of telomeres and at one point Dr Ruben mentions Rapamycin (an immunosuppressive drug first isolated from organisms found on Rapa Nui on Easter Island - don't say you never learn anything here), but that's not really the point.

The only extra is a short (just under ten minute) interview with Dahl (who wrote PUSHER for Nicolas Winding Refn) and screenwriter Sissel Dalgaard Thomsen, both of whom show a welcome embrace of horror as a genre, believing it to be the last place where serious social issues can be tackled in an extreme way, which they certainly achieve with BREEDER. Eureka's disc comes with a booklet containing an essay by Kat Ellinger who suggests the film could be considered as a modern-day vampire story. 

Jens Dahl's BREEDER is out on Blu-ray from Eureka on Monday 15th February 2021