Today I bring you the horror film that makes your annoying loudmouth dog next door look like a fuzzy cuddily bunny. If you don’t like dogs then this movie will scare the living daylight out of you, but read more about what the good and the bad are below.

Brought by OBS staff member Shan

Name: The Breed
Rated: R
Running time: 87 minutes

Directors: Nicholas Mastandrea

Synopsis
A group of undergrads fly to a remote island for a weekend to occupy a house left to their friend after his animal activist of an uncle passed away. It’s said that the island they will be staying on was once a dog combat training site, but the site was closed and the dogs were killed after a rabies outbreak.

A typical weekend with music and booze is what they all assume they have in store until dogs begin randomly making themselves known, seeming to grow in numbers (and in hostility). The small group of friends decide that after a close call with the seemingly rabid animals it would be best to leave, though find their sea plane floating down the river and the pack of wild dogs waiting outside. As the day goes on, the group finds themselves fighting for their lives and trying to find a way off the island.

Review
Being one of the biggest horror film groupies out there, I have to say I was a bit disappointed that a film with such a rating and label was so tame. The title and the movie poster really created an expectation that I found was not met.

Despite being displeased with the horror content, the fact that the film used an idea that isn’t used very often made up for that. We are always viewing films about serial killers that are impossible to kill, vampire-zombie crossbreeds and impossibly massive sharks but it’s quite rare to come across a decent film that has some fraction of reality to it. I personally believe that knowing something you’re watching has an actual possibility of occurring in the real world is far more terrifying than watching something that has absolutely no chance of coming true.

On that note, I thoroughly enjoyed that the pack of dogs were completely ordinary animals. They didn’t have superpowers, nor were they so oversized they would be impossible to escape. Having something as seemingly simple as dogs gone wild really gets the viewers realizing that they could find themselves in similar situations and that truly creates a new level of horror for the film.

In my opinion, the actors that were cast could not have done a better job. They each had a rather stereotypical role, (the medical student, the rebel, the hot girl and so forth) though they each managed to portray their character so that it was believable.

Taryn Manning did an amazing job portraying the emotionally lost female with a bit of baggage, and would have likely done wonders for the film should she have had a better plot to follow. For a while, it seemed as if her baggage might make for a decent subplot, though as soon as it began heading in that direction, it ended just as quickly.

All in all, it’s undeserving of the title of a horror film, though based on the plot and the acting; I would recommend it as perhaps a decent suspense film.

Rating: 6/10 stars