Based on a book by Nick Cutter, The Breach is a pleasingly entertaining slice of cosmic horror. It could have done with some more hard work from writer Ian Weir and director Rodrigo Gudiño, but there's enough here to please most horror fans.
Allan Hawco is John Hawkins, a Chief of Police who ends up investigating a case with a strangely mangled body at the heart of it. He hopes to clear everything up quickly enough, tying up loose ends before he leaves his position, but some people have other plans. Ending up at a fairly remote house in the middle of some woods, accompanied by Meg (Emily Alatalo) and Jacob (Wesley French), it soon becomes clear that some dangerous scientist chap has been doing some dangerous scientists stuff.
While this is a big move away from the last film I saw from Gudiño (that was The Last Will And Testament Of Rosalind Leigh), it's obvious that this is a man more interested in quiet moments of anticipation than any obvious scares. Which means that some people will have their patience tested by just how long it takes to present some enjoyable and traditional horror movie moments here. Thankfully, the thrills work really well when finally delivered in the third act.
Maybe we should be thankful that Weir has decided to pace things in the way that Gudiño prefers, considering the fact that he could have made the mistake of turning his first full feature screenplay into a hodgepodge of homages and clumsy jump scares. While I wasn't wholly satisfied by this, I prefer it to many other ways the material could have been presented.
The cast help, all of them being very watchable as they start to piece together the gruesome puzzle they end up in the middle of. Hawco is a solid lead, very much giving off the air of someone who can be depended on to do the right thing, and both Alatalo and French provide different kinds of tension in the way they interact with one another. Adam Kenneth Wilson has the right look for his scientist character, and Natalie Brown is very good as his wife, someone who perhaps knows more than she is letting on while the investigation seems to be leading the police no nearer to any answers.
Some decent practical effects here and there prove to be enjoyably distracting, and there's enough horror running through it to keep most genre fans interested, but there could have been just a bit more done to improve the pacing. Maybe adding one or two more characters, with one or two more people being put at risk, would have helped. By the time you get to the wilder moments, it makes you wish a few more shocks had been interwoven throughout the quieter sections. It's still a good time, but it's not a great one.
6/10
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