There’s a scene in John Frankenheimer’s “Prophecy” that relays the shortcomings of the animal horror genre. In it, a family is sleeping in the woods until they are attacked by a puppet-like mutant bear. One of the family members, a girl, gets up whilst still in her yellow bag and struggles to bounce away from the monstrosity. Sadly, Mama Mutant Bear notices and sideswipes the girl with a fist. The girl goes flying into a rock and explodes into a cloud of feathers. No blood, no body: just a swirling mess of feathers. Frankenheimer lets the camera settle on the aftermath, as if telling the audience, “Hey, isn’t this poignant?”
When done right, animal horror leads to successful films such as Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws.” When done wrong, the genre turns into one unintentionally funny fiasco, as is the case with Frankenheimer’s “Prophecy.”
At least Frankenheimer had some notable films (“Ronin,” “The Manchurian Candidate”) under his belt before he died because first-time director Nicholas Mastandrea’s foray into animal horror with “The Breed” turns out to be a lazy film on all counts.
The latest in a long line of movies sent directly to video after sitting on a studio shelf for a long time, the aggressors this time are genetically-engineered pack dogs with a taste for human flesh and all-too keen senses. Their prey are five college students on vacation in the wilderness. Nicki (Michelle Rodriguez) and Matt (Eric Lively) are the requisite couple. Matt’s brother, John (Oliver Hudson), is the slacker of the group. Sara (Taryn Manning) is the disposable “hot girl” whose one function in the movie is: I shit you not: a psychic link to the evil mutts. Rounding out the characters is Noah (Hill Harper). He provides the “comedy.” Plus he’s the only minority of the group, so I guess that has to count for something.
None of this matters either way because the characters are written as slabs of meat on two legs, and when the script does lend itself to develop its characters, it’s often through expository exchanges like this one:
Nicki: “Usually people who live on the edge like that die young.”
Matt: “Johnny wouldn’t be caught dead dying.”
There are a lot of these lines throughout the flick, and the actors spouting them look uninterested by the whole affair. I can say that I’m tired of Michelle Rodriguez and the scowl she seems to have in most of her movies (and the entire second season of “Lost”). I wish somebody would tell her a funny joke or give her a cookie because her scowl is used in full effect here. Taryn Manning looks under the influence of several drugs in the movie. One scene has her staring down a dog and lazily delivering, “If I break eye contact, it’s over!”
Equally lazy is the editing. Mastandrea must’ve graduated from the School of Uwe Boll because almost every scare scene in this movie is plagued by amazing amounts of slow motion, or they go by so quickly to the point that they’re incomprehensible.
But “The Breed’s” biggest pitfall is that it’s not scary. I find gore to be funny in most dumb horror flicks, and for a film that’s about a pack of rabid dogs (who, I might add, look quite happy throughout most of the flick), there’s surprisingly not too much blood being sprayed or limbs being torn. It lacks motivation, and as such never seems to give its threat enough time to truly frighten the audience. It’s a film flapping its saliva-coated jaws in the wind, and then moving on once it gets bored with that activity.
