Anders Heinrichsen, Signes Egholm Olsen, Morten Holst. Denmark 2019, 107mins, Certificate 18.
“How much can you get away with when you hold the reins?”
Originally premiered as part of the Arrow Video FrightFest Digital
Edition 2, Jens Dahl’s disturbingly chilling dissection of biohacking certainly
created a stir in genre circles. Inaccurately dismissed by some as a belated
Danish entry into the annals of the so-called torture porn sub-genre, the
strong reactions to sequences in the film’s final third seemed less about the
actual content, but more about their jarring juxtaposition in contrast to the relatively
measured restraint and cold sense of foreboding intrigue which precedes.
Olympic equestrian Mia (Sara Hjort Ditlevsen), conscious of her body
clock and with a specific window before the next Olympics, wants to have a
child, but her investment banker husband Thomas (Anders Heinrichsen) has taken
to refusing her sexual invitations. One of Thomas’ clients is Dr Isabel Ruben (Signes
Egholm Olsen), who is experimenting with a revolutionary new anti-ageing
treatment labelled ‘Resurrecta’. After a neighbour’s Russian au-pair narrowly
escapes abduction and staggers dishevelled to their door for help, Thomas
offers to drive her to the hospital. Mia’s suspicions lead her to track Thomas’
iPhone not to a hospital, but instead to an old sugar factory, and it is here,
in the bowels of the facility, where Mia will discover the ghastly secret
behind Dr Ruben’s ‘Resurrecta’ and be forced to engage in a brutal struggle
with her tormentors for survival.
There is a clinical precision to BREEDER, both visually and scripted. At
its cold heart is Signes Egholm Olsen’s white-coated Dr Isabel Ruben, whose unflinching
pursuit of the fountain of youth has transformed her into a modern-day Countess
Elizabeth Báthory. “There’s nothing natural about ageing. Ageing is a disease”,
she opines to an interviewer. Interestingly, screenwriter Sissel Dalsgaard
Thomson admits in the disc’s interview that she did not originally envision Dr
Ruben’s mad scientist as being female. However, the change of heart adds
additional resonance and poignancy to the script when it tackles gender
inequality and the sexual politics of ageing.
The film also takes broad swipes at the injustices in the class divide, and the moral implications of animal husbandry.
Visually, the colour grading is predominately tinged sickly yellow once the narrative arrives at the old factory, reflecting the (very) queasy goings on within, and the notable focus on urination and urolagnia. Branded like cattle, the caged women are tortured and humiliated by Dr Ruben’s viscous caretaker ‘The Dog’ (Morten Holst) and his assistant ‘The Pig’. “You’re a sadistic misogynist, and I’m letting you live out your dreams” admonishes Dr Ruben, who seemingly will turn a blind eye on her video monitor to nearly every act of enforced degradation metered out by ‘The Dog’ but will draw the line at rape (presumably not wanting her ‘cattle’ to be internally compromised). For this however is all merely a prelude to the gynaecological procedures awaiting ‘breeder’ Dr Ruben’s captives, and the horrific DNA extraction method that will follow.
Although compared in some quarters to the New French Extreme films of the early 2000s, the level of onscreen violence, gore and nastiness, whilst unquestionably repugnant on occasion, never reaches those notorious ‘heights’. Nor can it be said that it delivers such a devastating denouement as Pascal Laugier’s MARTYRS (2008). The most affecting moment is a disturbing display of Stockholm syndrome by one of the captives towards ‘The Dog’. Cathartic just deserts for torturers and experimenters are relatively slim-pickings, and the somewhat hurried wrap-up does not fully satisfy or entirely gel given all that has transpired, and the various plot-elements that remain underdeveloped.
Nevertheless, this is an intriguing Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde hybrid entry in the medical conspiracy sub-genre, popularised by more mainstream fare such as COMA (1978). However, once Dr Ruben’s secret is revealed, it transforms into a strong survivalist horror nightmare which is a different beast altogether. Be warned.
***(OUT OF 5*)
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