For while Isaac is able to vegetate in the great hereafter, we the audience are left to endure the most generic and by-the-numbers of PG-13 thrillers this side of the ‘90s. Perfunctory and more half-hearted than Isaac’s last breath, Breaking In is the story of a mom forced to protect her children from bad men in a set-up that should be Mother’s Day’s Straw Dogs, yet often plays more like Home Alone but with far less tension. This isn’t a film reaching out to shake you with suspense; it’s just the equivalent of a cinematic muscle spasm that comes during a sizeable yawn. Glover’s skill, however, has some faint usefulness, because Shaun’s father was a shady businessman who kept millions hidden in a safe somewhere in the house. While we aren’t sure where that box is for much of the running time, we do know he had security cameras in every room and a remote controlled drone that could spy on a property that includes lockdown armor plating on the windows. This is par for the course, because shortly after arriving at the house, Shaun is locked out of her own home and away from her in-distress kids by a group of bad guys (Billy Burke, Richard Cabral, Levi Meaden, and Mark Furze), who’ve come calling for the safe. But they clearly don’t know what kind of mother they’re messing with—and neither does the audience. Rather than being an even vaguely suspenseful chiller, Breaking In’s most audible reaction in my crowded press screening were waves of laughter and derision, as Union stumbles around the home, evading the eyesight of the most inept criminals this side of a Scooby-Doo cartoon. Indeed, while Burke brings some requisite even-keeled menace as the lead baddie who keeps remarking to his unconvinced audience that “Shaun is an impressive woman,” the other three play closer to The Three Stooges, with Cabral especially missing the mark as the “crazy” member of the crooks. Rather than being scary, Cabral’s Duncan comes off as a goon in an after-school special, even when he is slitting throats or making grossly unnecessary rape threats. In the lead role, Gabrielle Union is serviceably sympathetic and does well whenever she is given a chance to put on her “I am done with this” face prior to some nigh superhuman act of Derring-do. However, her performance is less of an invitation into the character’s plight as it is an overall unconvincing avatar for maternal badassery. More than once, she says she isn’t impressive; “I’m just a mother.” This may be true, but then how can she crawl like Spider-Man below a spiral staircase, waiting for her prey? There is a point late in Breaking In where Shaun warns Burke, “After tonight, it’s fair to say you don’t know me at all.” That also holds true for the audience once the movie is over. Worse still, no one will have any interest to learn more.
title: “Breaking In Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-07-18” author: “Kathryn Carter”
Gabrielle Union produces the film, and plays Shaun, a mother-of-two who takes her kids out to a high-security mansion in Wisconsin for the weekend. She’s inherited the place from her late father, a criminal who was under investigation by the government when he died, and she’s hoping to move on by getting the house ready for a quick sale. Little does she realise that her dodgy dad’s enterprises included squirreling away $4 million in a safe, somewhere in his house. Enter Eddie (Billy Burke) and his gang of dangerous thugs, who haven’t counted on interrupting Shaun and her kids as they settle for the night. In the confusion, Shaun winds up locked outside with the crooks holding her kids as hostages inside the high-tech smart house, leaving her fighting to break back in. While we mentioned Taken, this is also a canny twist on the time-honoured ‘Die Hard in a different building’ knock-off, purely by being ‘Die Hard outside a building’ instead, and there’s a lot of potential in the premise in its own right. Added to this, Union turns out to be a terrific lead – utterly sympathetic in her quest to save her kids, and doing what she does not because she’s an ex-Special Forces hard case, but because she’s a mother who’ll go to extreme lengths to protect her own. Opposite Union, the gang that imperils Shaun and her family is pretty underwhelming too. Burke, who was a saving grace of the Twilight saga as Bella’s bewildered dad, is probably the standout, but he has a lot of very lumpy villainous dialogue to chew over. Plus, he’s surrounded with sub-Wet Bandit criminal caricatures. Although it’s Union running around outside, it feels like she’s the only player who really connects with the setting and the killer premise. James McTeigue offers workmanlike direction, which might be fine if it gave us an entertaining nuts-and-bolts domestic actioner, but the mechanical quality of it all means that we never really believe the threat that’s powering the plot. Ryan Engle’s screenplay brazenly telegraphs pay-offs from every set-up, when the deceptively fast-moving first act shows us drones and other security measures that come back later on, but the unfulfilled potential is far more frustrating by the time the end credits roll. Breaking In has the makings of a Panic Room, but the film it most closely resembles is the first Purge movie; a cheap-as-chips, generic home invasion thriller that would probably be less disappointing if it didn’t squander a killer premise. That’s a real shame too, because 88 minutes is a four-star running time for this kind of thriller. But in the end, Gabrielle Union’s engaged, energetic performance is weirdly both the best and the worst thing about it. If the film didn’t keep threatening to be better, it might not have turned out so profoundly underwhelming. Breaking In is in UK cinemas now.
