A Breed Apart, Caroline Grace Currey, comedy, Furst Brothers, Griff Furst, Hayden Panettiere, horror, Isaac Flores, Javier Melgar Santovena, Joey Bragg, Lourdes Chavez, movies, Nathan Furst, Nicholas Mastandrea, Page Kennedy, reviews, Riele Downs, Troy Gentile, Zak Steiner
May 24, 2025
by Carla Hay
Directed by Griff Furst and Nathan Furst (also known as The Furst Brothers)
Some language in Spanish with subtitles
Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed Latin American island, the horror comedy film “A Breed Apart” (inspired by the 2006 horror comedy “The Breed”) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some Latin people and African Americans) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: Five social media influencers are invited to an island to train wild dogs and make them adoptable, in a contest to win ownership of the island, but the dogs go on a homicidal rampage.
Culture Audience: “A Breed Apart” will appeal primarily to people who don’t mind watching bottom-of-the-barrel terrible horror movies.
“A Breed Apart” is an aggressively loathsome horror comedy about annoying people trapped on an island with killer dogs that attack. This sloppily made film, which is incompetent on every level, is a relentless attack on viewers’ intelligence and time. This isn’t the type of movie that is so bad, it’s amusing. This is the type of movie that is so bad, it’s an endurance test to get to the end because there’s nothing enjoyable about watching this repulsive garbage. The shaky cameras, manic film editing, and obnoxiously loud sound editing might also cause some sensitive viewers to become nauseated just from watching this dreadful cinematic slop.
Written and directed by Griff Furst and Nathan Furst (also known as the Furst Brothers), “A Breed Apart” takes place on an unnamed remote and private island in Latin America. The movie was actually filmed in Guatemala, but most of the characters in the film are American. “A Breed Apart” is inspired by the 2006 horror comedy film “The Breed” (directed by Nicholas Mastandrea), which was about five college students who go to a remote island to party—only to find out that the island is populated by killer dogs.
“A Breed Apart” begins by showing a flashback to 15 years before the main story takes place. On the set of a movie that is being filmed on this island, it’s nighttime. An actress named Hayden Hearst (played by Hayden Panettiere) is being pressured to do a scene where the unnamed director (played by Griff Furst) wants to cover her in pig’s blood and then act in a scene that will simulate Hayden being attacked by dogs.
Hayden tells the director that she’s doesn’t want to do the scene that way because it’s not how the scene was rehearsed. She’s also concerned that someone on the crew lost a finger from when the dogs attacked. The director assures Hayden that everything will be under control.
Meanwhile, the movie’s chief dog wrangler Maria (played by Lourdes Chavez) is alarmed because two of the dogs (named Montoya and Tango) that are supposed to be in this attack scene have gone missing. Maria is also the owner of the dogs (mostly German Shepherds) that are being used for this movie. The dogs are kept in a kennel area on the island.
Maria tries to get another dog wrangler named Marco (played by Isaac Flores) to go with her to look for the dogs. At first, Marco refuses but then changes his mind. Maria goes into a cave area with a flashlight and is startled when several bats fly out of the cave. She soon finds Montoya with a bat stuck to the dog’s face. Maria use a baseball bat to strike the animal bat off of the dog.
But then, another dog attacks Maria and drags her away with his teeth. Marco dies after a dog chomps on Marco’s groin. Another dog wrangler named Hector (played by Javier Melgar Santoveña) gets attacked and killed when a dog crashes through the front window of a vehicle when Hector tries to get away. None of this is spoiler information because the movie’s trailer gives away a lot of what happens in “A Breed Apart.”
The movie implies that the bats in the cave have somehow infected the dogs that are on the loose. But there are no realistic symptoms of rabies in these dogs, such as excessive drooling, staggering or paralysis, The dogs shown in the movie can be calm one minute, and then homicidal maniacs within seconds. They also move very swiftly, with no signs that they have a disease.
Could these dogs be vampires? No, because they don’t fit descriptions from vampire lore of only being able to function at night. Most of the carnage in the movie happens during the day. And the dogs’ murder victims don’t become vampires but stay dead. In other words, “A Breed Apart” is a poorly conceived movie that just shows a bunch of dog attacks with terrible visual effects and no real origin story for why the dogs have become serial killers of humans.
Fifteen years after these killings on the movie set where the dogs went on a rampage, it’s mentioned that the movie was never completed. The island became abandoned shortly afterward. Only the dogs remained on the island. It’s a stupid scenario, because in real life, killer dogs would be captured and undergo euthanasia or would be killed in other ways.
A sleazy TV producer named Vince Ventura (played by Joey Bragg) comes up with the idea to have a contest where five social media influencers are invited to this island to tame the dogs and make them adoptable. The person who can make the most dogs adoptable gets to win ownership of the island, which is a prize valued at about $1 million. All of the influencers accept the invitation and travel by boat to the island.
Of course, “A Breed Apart” is so idiotic, it doesn’t really explain why Vince has the authority to hand over the deed to this supposedly abandoned island. It’s never made clear if he’s the rightful owner or not, but he has decorated part of the island and called it Vincetopia. Vince works with an assistant producer named Thalia (played by Virginia Gardner), who does whatever Vince tells her to do and is fully on board with this plan. This contest is supposed to be filmed for an eight-episode reality TV series, by there is no TV crew in sight.
These are the five social media influencers who are invited to the island:
- Violet (played by Caroline Grace Currey) has a social media channel with her brother called the Shenanigan Siblings, where they do silly stunts, such as having her brother stand behind Violet, as he feeds cake to her while she has her hands behind her back. Violet is very cynical and almost embarrassed about the work she does on social media. She also thinks most social media influencers are morons.
- Violet’s brother Collins (played Zak Steiner) is a good-looking dolt who loves being on social media and is constantly thinking up gimmicks in attempts to get more views and more subscribers.
- Killer Queen, also known as KQ (played by Riele Downs), does stunts using do-it-yourself toolkits.
- Big Farmer Jay (played by Page Kennedy) lives on a farm and does stunts involving farm animals.
- Mason Kelly (played by Troy Gentile) is a dork whose online persona is being a stereotypical party-loving playboy.
None of the people in “A Breed Apart” comes close to being likable or interesting. Fans of the 2022 movie thriller “Fall” (about two women trapped on a decommissioned 2,000-foot tower that they’ve climbed on a dare) will be disappointed that “Fall” co-stars Currey and Gardner have reunited for the woefully inferior “A Breed Apart.” “Fall” was able to get a lot of realistic suspense from a story that has only a few locations. There’s no suspense in “A Breed Apart,” which is mind-numbing in how many scenes look fake due to the tacky visual effects, horrible editing, atrocious dialogue and cringeworthy acting.
“A Breed Apart” is the type of cinematic junk where, during chase scenes, people who were several miles away suddenly show up in ways that wouldn’t be possible unless they could travel at the speed of light. There’s a scene that takes place on a boat where a severely wounded person who was left behind on the island suddenly appears on the boat, with no explanation for how this person got on the boat. And the computer-generated-image (CGI) dogs are so phony-looking, this botched filmmaking is distracting and ruins any intended thrills or scares. Real dogs and puppet dogs were also used in the movie and don’t look any better.
Panettiere (a former star of the TV series “Nashville” and “Heroes”) shares top billing in “A Breed Apart,” but it’s a bait-and-switch fraud because her screen time is no more than 15 minutes in this 100-minute movie. The character of Hayden Hearst shows up on the island 15 years after the movie she was in was shut down. The filmmaking in “A Breed Apart” is so inept, the filmmakers didn’t bother to make Hayden Hearst look any different from how she looked 15 years earlier. “A Breed Apart” is such a detestable movie experience, shoveling dog crap could be considered more entertaining and a more productive use of someone’s time.
Lionsgate released “A Breed Apart” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on May 16, 2025.