Movie Review: THE BREACH

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: July 11th, 2023 / 09:40 AM

THE BREACH movie poster | ©2023 Trinity Creative Partnership

Rating: Not Rated
Stars: Allan Hawco, Emily Alatalo, Natalie Brown, Mary Antonini, Wesley French, Adam Kenneth Wilson, Alex Lifeson
Writers: Ian Weir & Craig Davidson, based on the Audible Original THE BREACH by Nick Cutter
Director: Rodrigo Gudiño
Distributor: Trinity Creative Partnership
Release Date: July 11, 2023 (digital, VOD)

THE BREACH gets off to a promising horror movie start. A canoe drifts down a woodland river. There’s something inside the canoe, covered by a burlap sack. The canoe eventually comes to rest on the shores of a lake, where picnickers go to examine it. They take one look and flee, screaming in terror.

The immediate question here is, does whatever is in the canoe warrant that reaction? Both the strong practical effects and plot logic answer in the affirmative.

We are in the very small town of Lone Crow, Canada. Police chief John Hawkins (Allan Hawco) is about to leave his post for a more exciting job in the big city. However, he dutifully calls in the coroner, his old frenemy Jake Redgrave (Wesley French), who is mystified by both the condition of the body in the canoe, and how it got the way it is – the flesh is shredded, all of the bones are missing, and there’s a live wasp in there.

When the corpse is tentatively identified, it turns out he was Dr. Cole Parsons, a professor at an American university, who specialized in electromagnetic research. Local guide Meg Fullbright (Emily Alatalo) remembers bringing Parsons and a lot of his equipment by boat to an isolated house, about a year ago.

In an attempt to learn exactly what happened, Hawkins and Jake feel professionally obliged to explore said house. Meg’s boat is the swiftest way of getting there, so she comes along as well. Meg also happens to be the ex of both men (sequentially), which makes everyone uncomfortable.

This is the setup. In the broadest possible strokes, we can guess where the screenplay by Ian Weir & Craig Davidson, based on the Audible Original THE BREACH by Nick Cutter, is heading. Even so, there are lots of surprises, big and small.

We also get some intriguing sci-fi concepts that line up perfectly with some of H.P. Lovecraft’s notions about space and time. The real-world Hadron Particle Collider in Switzerland’s CERN laboratory is invoked, and THE BREACH comes off as a smart stretch of what-iffery. There is one bit of important how/why/when information that remains unclear (at least, on initial viewing), but it’s not a fatal flaw.

Director Rodrigo Gudiño is good at handling unsettling moments and disturbing gross-outs, and his pacing is deft. He and the design team also do an impressive job of marrying tech with surroundings that conceivably could be from Lovecraft’s time.

The character drama is done well, and the performances are all on target. Hawco’s down-to-Earth cop is so likable and responsive that we could imagine Hawkins anchoring a weekly procedural under other circumstances.

THE BREACH doesn’t cover new conceptual ground, but it mixes its elements effectively for a satisfying low-budget horror experience.

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