The Breach review.
The Breach starts slow but ends up delivering a fun and memorable final act.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
The Breach
Directed by Rodrigo Gudiño
Written by Nick Cutter and Ian Weir
Starring Allan Hawco, Emily Alatalo, Natalie Brown, Wesley French and Adam Kenneth Wilson
The Breach Review
We’ve talked before about the choices that low budget movies have to make. You simply can’t do everything that you want to. The movies that try to…mostly fail. That’s just one way to fail, however. Just as often you’ll find the movie to be severely underwritten out of fear of what they can’t do. Balance is one of the hardest things to strike. The Breach makes several smart moves to ensure that it succeeds at delivering on both its vision and the promise of a good movie.
When a body washes up on shore with its bones completely removed Chief of Police John Hawkins (Allan Hawco) embarks on a final investigation before he hangs his hat up for good. The investigation leads him to a machine that appears to power a portal to something unexplained.
The word “Lovecraftian” is thrown around a lot of times when it probably shouldn’t be. That’s not going to prevent me from using it to describe The Breach. What starts as a slow burn mystery eventually gives way to a terrific third act of excellent practical effects and creature design. Things get appropriately wild as The Breach wisely saves its best trick to pay off a long build. You have to wait a long time to see what comes out of the breach (or, for that matter, what goes in) but it is worth the wait.
That said…that “slow” build…is just that. The Breach starts slowly and stays that way for a long time. Investigative horror tends to reveal its information at a leisurely pace and this movie is no different. Add in discussion of particle physics and otherworldly machinery…and, yeah…there’s a slow pace at work here. The good news is that the reveals are interesting enough to justify it.
Hawkins finds his way to the home of a man who has been missing for a year…the home with the portal in the attic. The man’s wife Linda (Natalie Brown) finds the investigators in the house, and we start to get some explanations. A lost daughter, a missing and presumed dead husband…Linda has been through a lot. She’ll go through a lot more when her husband Cole (Adam Kenneth Wilson) unexpectedly returns one day.
From there we get information at a steadier pace. We also see one of Hawkins’ officers get caught in the doorway of the portal…and the slow, painful transformation that follows. The ordeal puts a ticking clock on the story that it needed. The time for talk finally ends (there is some relationship drama for those who enjoy that sort of thing) and The Breach moves into a different mode. A more exciting one.
The reveals are great, the creature effects are excellent…and The Breach leads to a thrilling conclusion. A great ending can make up for the shortcomings of what has come before…and that is the case here. You won’t be thinking about the pace that the story was limping at once all is revealed and the madness begins in earnest. There are enough quality moments before that to keep your attention anyway. An autopsy early in the film is an original and unique scene, for example.
The cast is up and down but there are enough interesting performances to make it all work. Most importantly, the new characters show up exactly when they need to. Just when you think you’ve got a feel for what’s happening someone will pop up to change your understanding. Wilson plays Cole with the right amount of menace and a Dr. Frankenstein-like ambition. Everything ramps up when he wanders out of the woods and disproves Hawkins theory about the boneless remains that started his journey. What comes before this is fine, if slow. What follows is a very good Lovecraftian story.
Scare Value
Low budget movies are always caught between what they want to do and what they can afford to do. The Breach overcomes budgetary constraints by saving the fun for the final act. Excellent creature effects pay off the slow burn…rewarding viewers for their patience. Every penny ends up on the screen. The Breach is better off for it.
3/5
The Breach Link
Available on VOD from Vudu
