Page Kennedy Archives – CULTURE MIX

Review: ‘A Breed Apart’ (2025), starring Grace Caroline Currey, Virginia Gardner, Riele Downs, Zak Steiner, Page Kennedy, Joey Bragg, Troy Gentile and Hayden Panettiere

May 24, 2025

by Carla Hay

Joey Bragg, Troy Gentile, Riele Downs, Page Kennedy and Grace Caroline Currey in “A Breed Apart” (Photo courtesy of Lionsgate)

“A Breed Apart” (2025)

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.

Grace Caroline Currey in “A Breed Apart” (Photo courtesy of Lionsgate)

“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 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.

Review: ‘Meg 2: The Trench,’ starring Jason Statham, Wu Jing, Sophia Cai, Page Kennedy, Sergio Peris-Mencheta, Skyler Samuels and Cliff Curtis

August 3, 2023

by Carla Hay

“Meg 2: The Trench”

Directed by Ben Wheatley

Culture Representation: Taking place in China and in or near the Pacific Ocean, the sci-fi action film “Meg 2: The Trench” (a sequel to 2018’s “The Meg”) features a predominantly white and Asian cast of characters (with a few African Americans and Latinos) representing the middle-class, working-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: Deep sea diver Jonas Taylor and his colleagues once again battle deadly creatures in or near the Pacific Ocean.

Culture Audience: “Meg 2: The Trench” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and “The Meg,” but “Meg 2: The Trench” replaces the campy fun of “The Meg” with an onslaught of terrible filmmaking.

Jason Statham and Sophia Cai in “Meg 2: The Trench” (Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures)

Even by low standards of stupid movies about animal attacks, “Meg 2: The Trench” is among the lowest of the low when it comes to idiocy. The movie also goes into a weird tangent of showing dinosaurs as much as sharks. “Meg 2: The Trench” (a sequel to 2018’s “The Meg”) is one of those moronic movies where people are supposed to be 25,000 feet underwater in the ocean, but they are able to survive without oxygen tanks and helmets. At one point, this vital survival equipment is discarded by the movie’s chief “hero” because this equipment just gets in his way when he was to travel across the ocean floor.

Apparently, getting “the bends” (getting injured from rising to the surface too quickly after being deep underwater) doesn’t exist in this world either. In “Meg 2: The Trench,” people who were 25,000 feat underwater are able to rise to the surface with no physical side effects. And apparently, face makeup stays intact for the women in the movie, despite all the life-threatening chases they go through underwater and above water. “Meg 2: The Trench” is based on Steve Alten’s 1999 novel “The Trench,” which is by far much better than the obnoxiously inept movie version of the book.

Directed atrociously by Ben Wheatley, “Meg 2: The Trench” is a giant mess of incoherence, with film editing so sloppy, it’s mind-numbing. Characters are “trapped” in one scene, but then in the next scene, the characters are suddenly “free,” with the movie quickly skipping over the details of how they escaped. One minute these people are stuck 25,000 feet underwater. The next minute, the survivors are in a canoe, with no signs of having medical problems from their ordeal. The movie doesn’t even bother to show them in wet clothes after rising from deep within the ocean.

The movie’s title character refers to the Megalodon shark (more than 60 feet wide), which is extinct in real life. But in the “Meg” movies, more than one Megaldon shark exists. “The Meg” was based on Alten’s 1997 novel “The Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror.” “Meg 2: The Trench” has very little resemblance to the novel on which it is based, in terms of the human characters. “Meg 2: The Trench” screenwriters Jon Hoeber, Erich Hoeber and Dean Georgaris butchered “The Trench” novel to come up with this awful screenplay.

In addition to battling Megaldon sharks, the human characters in “Meg 2: The Trench” have to contend with two fictional creatures that attack humans: (1) a giant octopus with the not-so-original name Mega-Octopus and (2) snappers (inspired by a dinosaur called Koreanosaurus) that look a lot like mutant iguanas that are about the size of sea lions. And then there are the movie’s human villains, led by Hilary Driscoll (played by Sienna Guillory), the wealthy CEO of a company that mines the ocean for resources.

“Meg 2: The Trench” takes place in and near China, but the movie was actually filmed in England and Thailand. Warner Bros. Pictures is co-distributing this movie with China-based CMC Pictures. “Meg 2: The Trench” begins by reminding viewers that dinosaurs lived 65 million years ago, but some of these dinosaurs were no match for a Megaldon shark. This opening scene shows a Meg attacking and devouring a smaller-sized dinosaur. In the “Meg” world, several animals that are supposed to be extinct are still alive in the 21st century.

The main protagonist in “The Meg” and “Meg 2: The Trench” is Jonas Taylor (played by Jason Statham), a British diver whose specialty is deep-sea search and rescue. Jonas is also an environmental activist who’s hired to bust up operations that violate environmental laws in large bodies of water. Near the beginning of the movie, Jonas is shown narrowly escaping from a cargo ship, where he was discovered as an intruder. Some goons chase him around the deck. And when Jonas is cornered, he jumps over the ship’s railing and plunges into the water unharmed.

Meanwhile, the other “alpha male” in “Meg 2: The Trench” is Jiuming Zhang (played by Wu Jing), the director of the Zhang Oceanic Institute in Hainan, China. His domineering father is well-known oceanographer Minway Zhang (played by Winston Chao), who’s not in “Meg 2: The Trench,” but he was in “The Meg.” Even though Jiuming is a respected oceanographer in his own right, Jiuming feels like he’s living in his father’s shadow. Jonas and two of his closest colleagues—dependable James “Mac” Mackreides (played by Cliff Curtis) and sassy Rigas (played by Melissanthi Mahut)—attend a reception where Hilary is honoring Jiuming, whom she wants to work with to find parts of the ocean that will be lucrative for her company.

As shown in “The Meg,” Minway and his oceanographer daughter Suyin Zhang (played by Li Bingbing) supervised an exploratory mission in the Mariana Trench (located in the western Pacific Ocean, near Asia), with Jonas on board for the mission, which turned out to be a deadly disaster involving attacking Megalon sharks. The vessel used in this fatal mission was the Mana One, which also doubled as an underwater research facility where single mother Suyin lived with her 8-year-old inquisitive daughter Meiying (played by Sophia Cai)—because nothing says “family bonding” like having an underage kid along for the ride in a dangerous underwater mission.

In “Meg 2: The Trench,” Suyin is now deceased. Meiying (also played by Cai), who is now 14 years old, is under the guardianship of Jonas, who treats Meiying like a daughter. Meiying wants to become an oceanographer, just like her mother, uncle and grandfather. “You need to take me seriously as a scientist,” Meiying tells Jonas when he says she can’t go with him on his next exploratory mission. And you know what that means: Meiying sneaks on the submarine where Jonas and his crew are doing their mission, once again in the Mariana Trench.

At the Mana One Research Center, the control room that is monitoring this mission is being operated by managing researcher Mac, level-headed engineer Jess (played by Skyler Samuels) and wisecracking engineer DJ (played by Page Kennedy), who is written like a buffoon and is saddled with some of the worst “jokes” in the movie. Mac and DJ were also in “The Meg,” so they already have an established bond. Most of the Mana One supporting characters who are new to “Meg 2: The Trench” are bland and have forgettable personalities.

Jonas is leading two submarines for his mission, which is going 25,000 feet underwater in the Mariana Trench. The submarine with Jonas on board also has Jiuming, surprise passenger Meying and crew members Rigas, Curtis (played by Whoopie Van Raam) and Sal (played by Kiran Sonia Sawar) and Lance (played by Felix Mayr). Viewers don’t really get to know the people in the other submarine, so you know what that means in a movie where groups of people can get killed at the same time.

Something goes terribly wrong when giant rocks surge through the ocean in a collision that crashes both submarines. Guess which ancient and monstrous shark caused this disruption? The submarine with Jonas and his crew is damaged but has no fatalities. There are no survivors on the other submarine, which has been completely demolished.

Making matters worse, although Jonas can communicate by radio to the Mana One Research Center’s control room, the control room’s radar to detect the sunken submarine is no longer working. Mac soon finds out that the radar’s system has been hacked into and destroyed. The people trapped underwater are running out of oxygen. Jonas makes the risky decision to walk the three kilometers (approximately 1.9 miles) across the trench to see if he can find anything to help them get back up to the surface.

A lot of people might think that “Meg 2: The Trench” takes place mostly underwater. They’ll be surprised to find out that at least half of the movie takes place on land, where there are more monstrous and human-killing creatures: the snappers. In typical villain fashion, Hilary has a chief henchman doing a lot of her dirty work. His name is Montes (played by Sergio Peris-Mencheta), who has a grudge against Jonas that is revealed in the movie.

Much of the last third of “Meg 2: The Trench” takes place in the South Seas, on Fun Island, which has a popular resort called Club Paradise. Fun Island is populated by numerous snappers, but apparently the people at Club Paradise had no idea until one particular day when the snappers attack. And let’s not forget that Mega-Octopus is lurking around too.

Club Paradise social director Coco (played by Sui Fong Ivy Tsui), who was a bride in “The Meg,” has her constant companion with her: a Yorkshire Terrier named Pippin. This dog is used as comic relief in the movie and in the marketing campaign for “Meg 2: The Trench.” But in actuality, the dog’s screen time in “Meg 2: The Trench” is less than 10 minutes. It’s “bait and switch” manipulation.

There are so many cringeworthy and eye-rolling things about “Meg 2: The Trench,” it’s as if the filmmakers decided to take everything that people dislike about mindless action flicks and put all of it into this movie. People don’t mind cheesy dialogue if it’s done with the right tone, but “Meg 2: The Trench” can’t even have fun with its foolishness. When one of the villains gets killed by shark, Jonas utters, “See you later, chum.” (If you don’t know the sea creature definition for chum, look it up.) It’s supposed to be the biggest joke in the movie, but this “joke” just falls flat.

Needless to say, between the unfocused direction, the horrible film editing, the mediocre-to-terrible acting, and the junkpile screenplay, “Meg 2: The Trench” is not the type of bad movie that’s somewhat entertaining to watch. It’s just a series of awkwardly cobbled-together scenes where action sequences look jumbled and the visual effects often look amateurish. “Meg 2: The Trench” soon becomes a blur of nonsense, because this movie just doesn’t care about having a good story. If you want action movies to at least have a good story, then you shouldn’t care to see “Meg 2: The Trench.”

Warner Bros. Pictures will release “Meg 2: The Trench” on August 4, 2023.