Don't Breathe (2016)
Movie rating: 8/10
I haven’t seen the 2013 Evil Dead remake, despite being a huge fan of Sam Raimi’s original trilogy. But from what I hear, Don’t Breathe was a direct reaction to that newer film. Stung by criticism of his work on the reimagined Evil Dead—that it was too gory, that it was a remake—director Fede Álvarez consciously took the opposite approach with his follow-up. Don’t Breathe is an original story with very little gore, no supernatural elements, and a focus on suspense. It also subverts many other horror tropes. Instead of supernatural entities endowed with otherworldly powers, Don’t Breathe features an antagonist who has lost one of his key senses.
The high-concept premise alone is enough to pique one’s curiosity. The plot revolves around three young Detroit thieves who break into the home of Norman Nordstrom, aka ”The Blind Man” (Stephen Lang), to steal a large sum of cash—the result of a payout after a wealthy young woman killed the man’s daughter in a car accident. Telling a home invasion story from the perspective of the burglars is another way Álvarez overturns expectations. The fact that they are robbing a blind man of the money he received from the death of his daughter initially makes the audience sympathetic to Nordstrom and paints the protagonists in an unflattering light. It also makes us wonder how Nordstrom could present a credible threat.
Rest assured, he does. The Blind Man is a heavily muscled Gulf War veteran, with an ample supply of guns and other weapons and an aggressive rottweiler as backup. His home is a fortress in which every door is secured with multiple locks, every window boarded up or covered with bars. The thieves spend much time figuring out how they’re going to break into this house, but the hard part turns out to be getting out. It’s a true “I’m not locked in here with you, you’re locked in here with me” situation.
Though the viewer is initially more sympathetic to the antagonist Nordstrom, it’s hard to build a movie around a totally unsympathetic protagonist. Of the three burglars, Rocky (Jane Levy) is given the most depth. She comes from a broken home, living with her drug and alcohol-addled mother whose new boyfriend (complete with swastika tattoo) has just moved in. Rocky hopes to use the money they steal from Nordstrom to move to California and build a better life. The other two, male thieves are her friend Alex (Dylan Minnette) and boyfriend Money (Daniel Zovatto). Alex’s father owns a security company, which is how they gain access to keys to the houses they rob. Alex seems to be involved in their thefts mostly because he is attracted to Rocky. That does not escape the notice of the more thuggish Money, who warns Alex to “be a good friend” and stay in the “friend zone”.
Once the thieves are inside the house and the Blind Man wakes up, the chase is on. Álvarez maintains suspense until the very end and keeps the viewer glued to the screen. We want to see both how the Blind Man will stop the thieves and how the thieves will escape his wrath. A scene in which all the characters are in the dark and the actors are shot in monochrome night vision is a standout. It’s an ingenious way to put the Blind Man and the characters with 20/20 vision on a more even footing—though given the Blind Man’s combat training and weapons expertise, he actually has the advantage here.
As the film progresses, Álvarez presents new revelations about Nordstrom that undermine our sympathy for him. By the last act, the viewer is likely to have a very different attitude to the Blind Man than they did in the first part of the film.
In the end, this is a film in which there are no truly “good” characters. All are people shaped by a cruel world who in turn act in cruel ways. It’s a reflection of the despair, alienation, and pessimism wrought by capitalism, a system that has eroded all traditional values and is incapable of moving humanity forward. Nordstrom’s blindness is the result of an injury he suffered in Iraq, as a foot soldier of U.S. imperialism in an aggressive war for oil. When a character begs the Blind Man not to commit a particularly horrific act, he responds, “There is nothing a man cannot do once he accepts the fact that there is no God.”
If Álvarez subverts a lot of horror tropes in this film, there are some that remain unchanged. No prizes for you horror movie buffs who guess which characters survive until the end. At least one major plot development halfway through strains our suspension of disbelief, with no explanation of how the Blind Man was able to achieve this unlikely feat. While Álvarez makes Nordstrom a convincing threat, there are times when he goes a bit too far and his antagonist is almost too competent.
These quibbles aside, Don’t Breathe is a clever and original effort, with one of the most unlikely figures ever to become a recurring horror movie villain. The best horror films tend to be those that emphasize chills and dread over gore and violence. If Álvarez set out to make the opposite of his 2013 Evil Dead remake, he appears to have succeeded.