Director Jens Dahl and screenwriter Sissel Dalsgaard Thomsen are behind Breeder, a violent Danish horror thriller (think Hostel meets A Handmaid’s Tale).

Sounds promising?  I have to admit to hungrily devouring my fair share of similar movies in the past; who can resist the fashionably grubbied heroine in a greasy echoing cell, poised to unite with her fellow prisoners against brutal treatment at the hands of a cold and sadistic (yet mysterious) corporation?

Ruthless businesswoman Dr. Ruben (Signe Egholm Olsen) runs a well-known beauty clinic with a hidden sideline in researching the reversal of the ageing process in her wealthy male clients by abducting young women and bio-hacking their babies’ DNA for her ghastly experiments, all whilst earning mega-bucks into the bargain.

When a bloodied and distraught neighbour calls on Mia (Sara Hjort Ditlevsen) and her cold and distant investment banker husband Thomas (Anders Heinrichsen) for help, Mia, upon searching for Thomas (who fails to return after stating his intention to take the distressed girl to hospital) finds herself trapped, branded and tortured by Ruben’s hired heavies in a grungy underground medical facility. She soon realises she’s not alone, and that the greed and corruption surrounding the entire organisation go much deeper than they first appear.

Unfortunately, one of the problems I had with this movie was the now all-too familiar, slightly clichéd storyline. Because it’s been done before so well and so often it’s impossible not to be more than a little predictable, unless there’s a spectacular twist waiting in the wings.

The fact that it’s filmed in Danish with English subtitles marks it down for me. Every so often a production will come along in its native language with subtitles for the uninitiated and it works, in fact would lose something were it otherwise (Das Boot wasn’t the same when I saw it after it’d been dubbed), but in this case I found the subtitles a distraction from the concentration needed to untangle the first half of the film, which I found disjointed and confusing, almost as if the preliminaries were being rushed through in order to get to the real meat of the story, where my attention was finally piqued.

Despite the initial sense of ‘who’s who and what on earth’s going on here?’ the acting, sets and cinematography are slick and polished, and there’s an intriguing dynamic between Mia and Thomas, whose relationship is clearly showing signs of strain. It’s focused on just enough to make you wonder what’s going on there, which again makes it a pity we aren’t given more time to get to really know the plot and characters before the movie gains a decent foothold.

While Breeder is watchable in the end and well-made and acted, it doesn’t have anything to offer that makes it stand out among other movies of this genre. Mia’s complicit attitude to her whole ordeal and the entire principle behind what the place of her incarceration stands for would be a cause of outrage among even the most passive of women, so I found her eventual reaction irritating and hard to swallow.

All in all, Breeder is a screen-filler; you may not feel like it’s time out of your life you’ll never get back, but bar one or two brief moments added for shock value, if you’re looking for something special it’s doubtful you’ll consider it time well-spent either.

3 out of 10 Centres Of Evil & Corruption