"Breach" dopey, dingy and dull even as just a dumb time-killer

Breach (2020)

There was “Underwater,” a solid “Alien” rip-off from earlier in the year (which actually feels five years ago). Now that 2020 is seeing its way out, get ready for a rote, low-rent “Alien” rip-off with “Breach,” ostensibly starring but really co-starring that bald matinee idol who once upon a time played John McClane for five movies. Director John Suits (2016’s “Pandemic”) suits up a cast of actors who put on tough faces and clearly don’t know their worth, and writers Edward Drake and Corey Large somehow give its biggest star the lamest Dad-joke one-liners. There’s just nothing we haven’t seen before in this C-grade genre quickie, itself a parasitic host of other better movies.

In the midst of a rebellion on Earth in 2242 A.D., Noah (Cody Kearsley) stows away on a ship en route to New Earth to colonize with 300,000 souls on board. While his pregnant girlfriend Hayley (Kassandra Clementi), the daughter of the ship’s admiral (a barely-there Thomas Jane), is sent to cryosleep in a pod for the next 84 days, Noah takes a position as a custodian. Chief among a hardened group of medics and engineers, some of which moonlight as moonshine makers, are Clay (Bruce Willis) and Chambers (Rachel Nichols). Noah keeps a low profile, scrubbing the bathrooms, until a parasite comes on board and begins infecting everyone. 

Cody Kearsley (TV’s “Riverdale”) makes for a bland-as-oatmeal hero as Noah, and a gussied-up but blank Kassandra Clementi gets to sleep off most of the film in full make-up. Their relationship fails at holding any emotional weight or rooting interest. Taking any job in any generic-looking straight-to-VOD action pic, Bruce Willis shows up physically as a newly minted schlock lifer, but he’s clearly in it for the paycheck as Clay. This is not the star’s finest hour when Willis gets to deliver, “Who wants barbecue?” with the same level of enthusiasm as emptying the dishwasher before setting a group of zombified crew members on fire. 

Dopey, dingy and, worst of all, dull, “Breach” doesn’t have any lofty goals beyond entertaining as a stupid time-killer, but it can't even do that right. If it aimed to be a dystopian sci-fi action-horror throwback, its reach far exceeds its grasp (although it does add Chekhov’s Moxacil to the list of tropes). There’s some messy splatter, but the monster effects are cheesy at best and inept at worst, especially once the severed limbs of the zombified hosts roll themselves into one big monster blob. The production values are so cheap, too, that the movie seems to have been shot down the same two hallways and a couple of rooms. There’s no need to even analyze “Breach,” which doesn’t have the decency to be a fun kind of terrible.

Grade: D

Saban Films is releasing “Breach” (89 min.) to video on demand on December 18, 2020.