★★★★ out of ★★★★★
Intensity 🩸🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
Directed and written by Alex Goyette
Breeder serves up some jaw-dropping suspense along with mind-blowing, darkly humorous elements that turn tropes and expectations upside down.
Official synopsis
An eccentric poodle breeder lures a broke college student to her remote ranch with a promise of research funding. But, as he soon learns, there’s a catch.
Review
Writer/director Alex Goyette plays with viewer expectations from the opening sequence of his excellent feature Breeder to the finale. In that opening, dog breeder Patti Kolb (Dot-Marie Jones in an absolutely bravura performance) gruffly greets a woman who is there to, viewers assume, a puppy. She is given a set of instructions sternly and then guided past a few puppies in a pen up dark stairs, and we instantly start worrying.
Someone else who should be worrying is protagonist Russell (Daniel Doheny), an MIT dropout trying to get his passion project involving saving bees from extinction off the ground. Without a PhD, though, no one wants to fund it. His fiancée Haley (Tanaya Beatty) obviously has more street smarts than the MIT student, as she is leery when Patti — unknown to both of them — sends a letter to Russell offering interest in funding his dream project if he comes to meet her for dinner at her home, about a five-hour drive away from the home that he shares with Haley.
Once there, he has a decidedly awkward initial meeting with Patti, whose stern manner seems to keep a violent nature bubbling just under the surface. He has dinner with her and her five daughters, including fellow brilliant student Ainsley (Maddie Phillips). It is then and there where Patti makes her offer of funding, but only if Russell agrees to help her out with her own biological project. I don’t want to give away too much, so let’s just say that Patti has bigger things in mind than breeding only dogs.
Goyette infuses the nail-biting chiller aspects of Breeder with plenty of dark humor. Besides inverting gender roles in a horror story of this type, he turns tropes every which way as well. One fun example is the payoff when a lone police officer comes to expect Patti’s house. Where usually we can expect the cop to be killed, this officer of the law is in for quite a different shock.
The cast is marvelous, with the three leads earlier giving standout performances. Jones is a force of nature as the physically imposing, dictatorial villain. Doheny is great as the nebbish Russell, who viewers will wish would just make the right decision once in a while instead of continuously getting himself into hotter water. Phillips is also superb as the alluring Ainsley, who Russell must decide to trust or not.
The Verdict
I had a blast with Breeder and highly recommend this wild slice of independent fright fare. Goyette gives viewers some philosophical food for thought along with highly amusing edge-of-your-seat thrills and chills. This one has cemented a spot on my list of 10 favorite horror films of 2026.
Breeder, from Independent Film Company (IFC) and Shudder, opened in cinemas on October 28, 2026.
Review by Joseph Perry
