“… the performances were so wooden they were probably purchased at Home Depot.”

Yesterday was Mother’s Day, and as you know that means that you kind of have to do anything that your mom wants for 24 hours. Now I’m not saying I have a hard life, all my mom usually wants to do is go to the movies, but that being said my mom has notoriously terrible taste in movies. Her pick this year was originally Life of the Party, but she changed her mind last minute and we went to see Breaking In instead. What is Breaking In? Have you ever seen Hostage? No? What about Firewall? No? Alright, have you ever seen any movie that is about a home invasion? That’s Breaking In.

I don’t hate the home invasion/thriller genre, but the problem I had with this movie was just how generic it was. The story was so basic, if you have seen any movie with even a tangentially similar plot you’ve seen Breaking In. It does absolutely nothing that is surprising; even the twists are as predictable as death and taxes. And because of this fact the movie was boring. There was absolutely nothing connecting me to the events on screen, and that made for a miserable time.

“Well what about the characters?” I can hear you ask. What about them? Just like the plot the characters offer nothing different or noteworthy. The villains were pretty cookie-cutter, each one fitting their role and doing nothing beyond that, and the main characters were very bland. I mean I can blame a lot of this on the writing, but I also can’t ignore the fact that the performances were so wooden they were probably purchased at Home Depot. There was absolutely nothing that made any character in this movie special in any way. As a matter of fact, an attempt was made to create an interesting character in the main character, but these attempts just became ham-fisted pandering.

And I also found that Breaking In was most definitely neutered by its rating. I’m not saying that the film would have been good if the characters could say “fuck” every once in a while, but it would have helped sell the film’s realism. It’s a lot harder to be afraid of a villain when they say, and I quote: “Do what you’re fricking told!”. It’s not just the language that was impacted by this either, but the obvious cuts around violence were pretty jarring as well. And all of these moments were just made more apparent by the films decision to run the plot into the ground. Honestly, clocking in at 90 minutes Breaking In is not a long movie, but it sure feels like it is.

Overall Breaking In is the kind of movie that you regret watching almost as soon as it starts. Its story is a retread that you’ve seen a thousand times, the performances are terrible, and it even shoots itself in the foot (with surprisingly little blood) by allowing its rating to destroy any semblance of realism it would have had.

I give Breaking In an F