There’s Been a Breach (2020) In Good Cinema
Originally published July 21, 2021
Title: Breach
First Wide Release: December 17, 2020 (Digital/Streaming Platforms)
Director: John Suits
Writer: Edward Drake, Corey Large
Runtime: 92 Minutes
Starring: Cody Kearsley, Bruce Willis, Rachel Chambers
Where to Watch: Check out where to find it here
In the future, Earth has become a desolate wasteland where crime, poverty, and pollution run rampant. Projected to be unsuitable for human life in a few short decades, missions are planned to evacuate as many humans as possible to begin life on a new planet. Noah (Cody Kearsley) steals a spot on the last ship out to ensure he can be with his pregnant girlfriend Hayley (Kassandra Clementi) in the new world. Midway through their journey mysterious and gruesome fates befall Noah’s fellow crewmembers while Hayley and the hundreds of thousands of other passengers are in hyper sleep. It’s up to the remaining crew to fight back against the parasitic creature and protect their future in the new world.
Breach is a derivative and lifeless sci-fi/action-horror hybrid that is as dull as it is senseless.
It’s very clear that no one signed up for Breach intending to make the next big sci-fi horror masterpiece. The script jumps around a bunch without commitment and plenty of plot points remain unresolved by the film’s end. Beyond that, there’s very little development given to either the characters or the force they are fighting against.
Fighting against it feels like overkill, especially with how easy it is to overpower the entity but how hard it is to kill it. Breach becomes this cyclical bore that never has any real stakes. Characters die and get resurrected only for them to respawn immediately thereafter? The idea is scary, sure, but it’s not awfully cinematic or compelling after the third or fourth time it happens.
Breach also deviates from its betters by presenting a fun action-packed film that’s actually a nihilistic bore without much thought to justify its decision. The motivations behind the parasite arriving on board feel timely in a sense but it isn’t developed at all. There’s no accountability in the story or follow up afterwards. It just is. It feels like the team is making a statement about humanity without backing its thesis up at all beyond “maybe humans are the real parasite after all.” It’s neither illuminating nor interesting.
Above all, Breach misses the mark on just about everything one needs to make a good movie. The dialogue is corny as hell and the writing is as predictable as a traffic at 8:00am. Everything culminates in the most obvious ending ever to anyone who has seen at least three or four sci-fi horror films before this one. Darkness is used to hide poor special effects work and cheap set design. The clunky aesthetic makes it feel more like a relic from 2003 and not of a film released less than eight months ago. The film is all over the place in every sense of the word.
Everyone gives a below average performance here too. It doesn’t seem like anyone is taking it seriously while simultaneously hating every second of being there. Willis and Kearsley seem to be phoning it in the most. I don’t blame them. Most of the characters blend in with each other and aren’t given enough screen time to make a difference. They are all just fodder to bulk up the army of unkillable and powerful undead, parasitic creatures that overpower the last half of the film.
While it’s clear Bruce Willis needs to choose his roles more carefully, Breach is not the absolute worst that cinema has to offer. It’s merely a mashup of much better films like Aliens and The Thing as well as even mediocre films like Doom, which is still better than this listless alien-zombie thriller. It does, however, get a few points for being completely ridiculous and unintentionally hilarious. Not something that I will ever revisit or recommend, Breach is a film meant for those who have seen everything else and are looking to kill some time with nihilistic B-movie carnage.
Overall Score? 4/10
