Breeder
Director: Patrick Vella
Starring: Rebecca Paris, Naomi Said, Aleksandra Andrea
90 mins; Class 18;
Eden Cinemas Release

There has been quite a buzz surrounding Breeder touted as Malta’s first full-length horror production, which opened in time for the forthcoming Halloween weekend.

While the film-makers, led by director Patrick Vella and writer Stefan Magri, successfully splash the screen with buckets of blood and gore – elements touted gleefully in the film’s promotional material – a flat script and weak characterisation dilute the effect somewhat.

Breeder opens with a series of news bulletins describing a phenomenon that has hit the Maltese islands. Over two years, many people have gone missing, never to be seen again in a case that has clearly stumped the authorities.

Sandra (Rebecca Paris) is a private investigator who is on maternity leave, but is persuaded by her assistant Jennie (Naomi Said) to help a Russian woman Olga (Aleksandra Andrea) to find her son who has also gone missing.

Indeed, Kurt (Jurgen Muscat) is the latest victim of the Breeder, played by Patrick Vella (who also directs), who breeds live worms in the insides of his victims.

The team clearly went through a lot of hard work and effort to create solid production values. The blood spills relentlessly, the deep, dark red substance oozing across the screen.

We witness torture, eviscerations and anal probes; and the special guest stars of the film, the hundreds of live worms used (I missed the disclaimer that any of them came to any harm) are all effective – if you like this sort of thing.

Add to that some tight editing and the effective use of some popular and otherwise soothing classical music pieces as the backdrop to some of the more horrific actions unfolding on screen and the atmosphere is set.

However, the downside to all this is that while audiences will be completely grossed out by the images on screen, the emotional resonance necessary to scare them silly is non-existent, because much less effort has been put into the script and character development.

The plot relies too much on implausible coincidences

The story is certainly the weakest link in Breeder. As it unfolds, the plot relies too much on implausible coincidences and underlying connections among some of the main characters that I can’t go into without giving too much away.

Moreover, there are way too many incidences of people conveniently being in the right place at the right time (or the wrong place at the wrong time, depending on the character’s point of view, really).

As for characterisation … the underlying premise that the Breeder is in this solely for financial gain is quite frankly a little lame and not as sinister as this premise should be.

There is absolutely no method to his madness and, despite Vella’s imposing presence and mask, he comes across more as a slob of a guy with an unorthodox way of earning money than the brutal monster he should be.

In the meantime, many of the supporting characters are set up simply to be victims and, for the most part, we couldn’t care less about them or their plight. Also, the penchant of virtually the entire cast using bad language during the course of normal conversation gets really irritating after a while.

From the way the dialogue is structured it seems like nothing more than an unnecessary gimmick which adds nothing to either story or character.

Hindered by such a weak script, there is very little the cast can do to elevate their performances to anything above average.

Kudos, however, to Meliza Muscat, as Nina, a young mute girl who does provide a couple of effectively chilling moments and to Andrea, who injects a little genuine feeling into her characterisation of the stoic yet distraught Olga.