The Breach

Pretty good reworking of the Lovecraft tale that was used as the basis for the far better film From Beyond made in 1986. I've read a novel by Nick Cutter, who was the writer/adapter of this screenplay, and enjoyed it enough to give this film a chance.

The acting from the entire cast is decent, and it is nice to see a lot of practical effects used in lieu of CGI. While the final third is exciting, it leaves too many unanswered questions, although it does have a nasty final sting for the viewer.

I'd say it's worth 90 minutes of your time if you don't mind a slow buildup to the third act. I was never bored with it.

I'll start by admitting that I watched this because I saw Alex Lifeson in the cast and did a double-take. Unfortunately his scenes seemed to be shot from his own webcam in his studio with his amplifiers in the background lol. But hey, he got me to watch it!

The movie is a sci-fi/horror mystery that doesn't really explain anything and ends up being more confusing than interesting. Even though you can predict where things are going, you have no idea why. The story felt largely inspired by "From Beyond", but this movie fell short in every way. The overall production was about on the level of a moderately budgeted SyFy original movie from 2005. None of the actors stood out as being particularly effective in their roles. I saw that Slash did the music and was listed as an executive producer, and then there was a scene at the end with "Are You Afraid of the Dark?" style music that made me laugh out loud.

The biggest positives I can give are to the editing, some of the prop design, and there was some effective cinematography. And even though I wasn't enjoying the movie, the director knew how to keep me engaged and the movie was decently paced.

4/10 - I'd recommend this to someone who has fun watching bad movies, it's not painful to get through.

I'd heard of The Breach back in 2022 and certainly found the basic premise to be intriguing. A small town police chief (played by Alan Hawco) is investigating the apparent death of a former CERN physicist after a corpse is discovered upon a drifting boat. As he explores the man's remote home, he makes horrific discoveries about his experiments...

Written by Nick Cutter of The Troop fame, with clear Lovecraftian influences, the story is solid and sets up a nice mystery. The effects are mostly well executed (though, please, can horror films reduce their use of smoke machines?), the creature designs are suitably detailed and revolting, Hawco is cleary charming in the lead and the film is brave enough not to bombard the viewer with gore from the start. It is, however, not without its problems, some minor, others not so minor. The film would have benefitted from more focus on the central mystery and trying to build more intrigue around it. Whilst the pacing is reliable throughout, it doesn't create the energy and haste needed during its finale. And, probably my biggest complaint is the ending: it's too predictable and left me feeling dissatisfied. I think they could have been braver without some of their choices in final act.

I do feel it is necessary, however, to point out that it maintained my interest for 90 minutes, didn't decide to draw itself out for a wholly unnecessary 2-plus hours and, for an indie production, it looks excellent. Worthy of a rental for horror fans.

The breach had all the makings of an excellent cult horror feature, but likely will not reach those heights.

A trio of small towners go to explore a house on the other side of a river to get insights into the grisly death of a scientist. What they find gets progressively worse until things all come to a head.

Unfortunately for the film nobody can act, save for Natalie Brown who does the best she can in the thankless role of the scientists estranged wife looking for both her missing husband and their daughter.

I was about to turn the film off until she stepped into it and elevated the film while she was on screen.

The special effects are decent, but they don't save the film from feeling unbearably hokey and melodramatic versus tense and scary.

The writing itself leaves a lot to be desired, I wanted to like this movie, some of the plot was interesting. Occult underlinings, physics, dimensional travel, I feel maybe reading the book would have been a better experience.

The music, is not great to put it kindly, it feels very out of place and far too melodramatic at times, detracting from the film instead of adding to it.

Perhaps Rue Morgues second attempt at a film will be better. Sorry guys, this one's a miss.

5 stars for Natalie Brown and the effects.

There are some interesting ideas here, to be sure. Unfortunately, it feels like it borrows heavily from numerous different sources, fails to deliver a coherent storyline, well defined characters, good pacing, or a satisfying conclusion. Apparently, this is the directorial debut of one of the head honchos at Rue Morgue magazine. I can cut a little slack for lack of technical experience; not so much for failures of execution in areas that really shouldn't have been that hard to fine tune. It does feature some excellent creature effects toward the end; it just doesn't really explain why the creatures are there or why they appear when they do. All in all, not horrible, but not really worth watching either, IMO. Maybe this direcor will do better next time.