‘Breeder’: Perverted and Hilarious Horror Debut [Tribeca Review]

Is a film about a glory-hungry 20-something-year-old dork, eugenics, human trafficking, and incestuous voyeurism supposed to be this funny? This is the question you’ll have to wrestle with when you finally watch Alex Goyette’s foray into horror, Breeder, which premiered at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival. The film tells the story of a college student (Daniel Doheny) who has fumbled the bag on funding for his bee research. His desperation finds him visiting a mysterious poodle breeder (Dot-Marie Jones) at her isolated ranch. Patti offers to fill in the financial gaps for Russell with a catch: He has to breed with her daughter.

Over time, Breeder feels claustrophobic, quickly turning into a kidnapping horror flick in the vein of Black Phone, Fresh, or Split. But it’s the exposition that really sparkles. You learn enough about Russell to understand why he’d take Patti up on her insane offer. Amid conversations about the “male loneliness epidemic” and the manosphere, it’s especially intriguing to see horror movies like Breeder and last month’s Obsession fantastically illustrate the potential consequences of men feeling disenfranchised. 

Still, unlike a lot of genre movies these days, the horror of Breeder isn’t just psychological, but ideological. It transcends the cat-and-mouse antics of the genre. Because whether you have kids or not, the idea of being forced to create them — emphasis on force — is deeply uncomfortable. Even the word “breeder” makes you feel affronted. Once a term in the anti-natalist movement, “breeder” has been co-opted by members of the queer community — both ironically by new-school gays and unironically by the old-school gays who weren’t interested in marriage equality or adoption access. The word “breeder” is inherently disdainful toward people, especially heterosexual people, who want to reproduce.

How Goyette toys with this idea feels cheeky and dangerous, especially in this era where the U.S. government is championing human reproduction over everything. What’s more is that the term “breeder” has long been associated with a different horror-comedy, namely Jonathan Swift’s 1729 essay “A Modest Proposal,” where he quips about feasting on babies to control population growth.