Breeders

Breeders is a 2020 American science fiction body horror film directed by Ari Aster and written by James Gunn and Ari Aster. The film is also produced by Jason Blum and Oren Peli.

The film follows a town being invaded by a parasitic alien who turns the men in town into sexually violent mutants intent on breeding the women and killing anyone who gets in their way. It is up to a group of survivors involving six teenagers and their parents to stop the the infestation before it's too late.

The film stars Graham Phillips, Alex Wolff, Millie Bobby Brown, Isla Fisher, Ryan Reynolds, Finn Wolfhard, Rowan Blanchard, Bailee Madison, Andrew Lincoln, Amy Seimetz, Elizabeth Banks, Josh Brolin, Bella Thorne, Bryan Cranston, Kirsten Dunst, Nick Robinson, Charlie Day and Christina Hendricks.

The film was distributed by Dreamworks and Blumhouse Productions and was released on October 24, 2020.

Breeders received favorable reviews from critics who end up comparing it from Shivers to Stranger Things to The Goonies and to Gunn's own film, Slither. It was a resounding box office success, grossing $365 million dollars worldwide.

Plot

The film opens up in space as a meteor speeds towards earth where it crash lands in the woods right near the neighborhood of Halo Cross, North Carolina. Family man Henry Kemp witnesses the crash and goes outside of his house to investigate. While in the woods, he finds a slime covered trail coming from the meteor and that something has hatched from it. Henry follows the trail to find a small alien parasite that multiplies into 5 creatures before one of them stings him in the hand when he tries to pick it up. The creatures escape before growing a sharp stinger and growing 3 feet tall. While roaming the woods, one of the creatures is captured by scientist couple, Joe and Donna Mills.

The next day, a troubled teen named Nathan Walker is on the verge of expulsion after violating a number of school rules which his father Todd Walker, mother Joy Walker and his younger sister Allison disapproves. The cause of his behavior was that Joy and Todd are on the brink of divorce due to Todd being too focused on his job as the town's Sheriff.

Nathan gets expelled that same day when he and his friends Joey Kemp and Brittany Green plant a stink bomb in the auditorium which explodes during an assembly that they were forced to attend. Nathan is grounded as a result and is placed on parental house arrest. Meanwhile, Allison and her crush Shane Merrick are out walking in the woods near neighborhood and finds the meteor before running back to the house to warn Todd about what they found.

Meanwhile at the L.A.B., Joe and Donna discover that the alien parasite has a stinger that infects the first person it sees and turns the victim into a breeder, a half human/alien hybrid that breeds with the first person they see to create offspring that will destroy a population at a catastrophic rate. Donna also calculates that after the parasite stings each person, it with grow to the maximum size of 40 feet. Joe is horrified that the parasite has already grown 3 feet and has already stung someone, Donna and Joe then leave to kill the person who got stung but the creature escapes and stings Joe's colleagues before breaking out of the lab and growing to the size of 10 feet.

Meanwhile, Joe and Donna's daughter Reese is at cheerleading practice and choreographs a new routine but the practice is interrupted when Donna and Joe warn Reese that something escaped from the lab and will kill humanity.

Cast

The Kids:

Graham Phillips as Nathan Walker

Alex Wolff as Joseph "Joey" Kemp

Millie Bobby Brown as Allison Walker

Finn Wolfhard as Shane Merrick

Rowan Blanchard as Brittany Green

Bella Thorne as Reese Mills

Nick Robinson as Gabe Foster

Bailee Madison as Emma Stewart

The Adults:

Andrew Lincoln as Henry Kemp

Isla Fisher as Helen Stewart

Josh Brolin as Sheriff Todd Walker

Kirsten Dunst as Donna Mills

Bryan Cranston as Dr. Joe Mills

Ryan Reynolds as Derrick Merrick

Charlie Day as Bennett Stewart

Amy Seimetz as Faith Merrick

Christina Hendricks as Sheila Kemp

Elizabeth Banks as Joy Walker

Trivia

• This film marks the third collaboration between Elizabeth Banks and James Gunn since their films Slither and the recently released Brightburn.
• Finn Wolfhard and Millie Bobby Brown who played Shane Merrick and Allison Walker in this film also played Mike Wheeler and Eleven on Stranger Things.
• Josh Brolin read the script for Breeders after signing onto the project and was grossed out by the content but reminded him of his acting debut from The Goonies and he even described it as The Goonies meets Species with spoonfuls of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers.
• Breeders was originally rated NC-17 for the amount of gratuitous male nudity displayed in the film and was cut several times to obtain an R rating. Breeders is rated R for strong disturbing violent and sexual content, graphic nudity, bloody sci-fi violence and language throughout.
• Kirsten Dunst admitted in an interview on The Ellen Show that Breeders was the most disturbing horror film that she ever worked on and hopes that the film will be a classic in the future.
• Andrew Lincoln attended a well received test screening with his Walking Dead co-stars Melissa McBride, Norman Reedus, Lauren Cohan and Micheal Rooker and his former co-stars were left shaken from his nude scene in which Lincoln's character emerges from a cocoon naked before killing Alex Wolff's character. Lauren Cohan later admitted that she loved Breeders and that it payed a lot of homage to the 1995 film Species
• Bella Thorne has said that Breeders will be the new beginning for horror films in the 2020's.
• Breeders was originally going to be released on August 14th, 2020 but due to the film being given an NC-17, the release was pushed back to October 24th, 2020 just in time for Halloween.
• After the film's release, Ari Aster was approached to write a sequel to this film but he refused due to other projects and a sequel was never possible.
• Breeders holds a 79% on Rotten Tomatoes with the site's consensus reads, "Breeders may ooze with goopy gore effects and some gratuitous nudity as others will expect but it also benefits from a stellar cast, a grounded horror story and another score for Ari Aster".
• James Gunn admitted in an interview that Breeders was originally a sequel to his 2006 directorial debut, Slither in the first draft of the script. When Ari Aster came on board to helm the project, he did a second draft of the script that featured comedic elements and less nudity or gore which made Gunn consider to drop out of the project. Feeling bad, Aster watched Slither and convinced Gunn to stay which inspired him to co-write with Aster for the final draft of the script which focus solely on the elements from the first draft. He later went on to say that Breeders is no longer a sequel to Slither but it is still in the same universe as that film and the film will have a more serious tone.