Don't Breathe is the daring, game-changing horror picture I don't think anyone was expecting. Which is a little weird, because its premise is only a mash-up of home invasion thrillers. Think of Wait Until Dark, toss in Hush, and then highlight the night-vision scene in The Silence of the Lambs. The plot, you probably are aware, concerns three young thieves with dreams of escaping their broken fortunes and fates. As a final act before achieving their goal and moving to California, they plan to break into an old war veteran's house to steal his large sum, given to him by a wealthy family whose daughter killed his own daughter. Upon seeing that the old man is blind, they subdue their reservations, invade his house, and search for the money. The blind man, alerted to their presence, challenges them and, after killing one, continues on a fierce hunt to stop, catch, and kill the other intruders.
Actually, the film reminds me a little of a particularly haunting episode of Dateline I saw a few years ago. A single man, convinced that his home was being repeatedly broken into by young people, set a trap and lay in wait. When the intruders indeed entered the home, the man waited downstairs and killed them. I don't remember the specifics of the episode, but for some reason the man audio-recorded the encounter, and after killing the first intruder, he wounded and spoke to the others before killing them as well. It was a weird episode, with suggestions of all kinds of crazy things the home owner may or may not have done to the bodies, both before and after they were deceased.
Okay, now back to the movie, before I have more nightmares about that episode.
Once the thieves first approach the house in the dead of night, the film becomes almost unbearably taut, riveting us every minute to the edge of our seats. My cold sweat only compared to that of those sitting near me in the theater. It's a surprisingly brutal exercise in muscular horror, forcing its way into visceral violence with not much blood. It's sort of an answer to director Fede Alvarez's last feature, the remake of Evil Dead, which brought new meaning to the word "bloodbath". Here, notably low budget constraints seem to allow Alvarez's team more creativity in telling their story. We aren't disgusted by the blood, we're disgusted by the characters. We aren't terrified by the gore and shock-value special effects, we're terrorized by the close-quarters, high-stakes cat-and-mouse game these players are enacting.
Pedro Luque's astounding cinematography forces us to strain in our seats, eager to peer through the dimly lit, maze-like interiors, afraid of who may be lurking around each corner; the improbably lengthy, fluid shots through claustrophobic shadows rev up the tension while adding an uncanny grace to the film. I'd go so far as to say that the cinematographer and director are behaving not unlike the villain here, inviting us into their world only to lock the door behind us, pull out the rug, and frighten us into submission. The simple act of witnessing the film seems to be a horror unto itself.
It's a great movie. Go see it.
Okay, now into my consternation. I know it's a staple tradition in the genre, but there comes a point when I tire of the villain reviving itself. It's not a fault of the villain, though: It's a fault of the hero. I appreciate and could wax lyrical about the moral strictures placed on hero characters in horror films, about the tropes of innocence and innate goodness that forbid him or her form performing certain acts onscreen. No problems there. But when the hero's behaviors suggest more fear and submission, more foolishness and cowardice than resourcefulness and gumption, I feel less sympathetic for the hero. When the villain is literally butchering your friends and torturing your body with no hope of relent, knocking him back and running away will do nothing to help you. Hitting him once on the head and fleeing, locking the door standing between you, running and then turning to taunt him; all of these indicate a distinctly unsympathetic (indeed, more pathetic) hero who not only can scarcely defend him/herself, but who cannot even look out for his/her own best interests.
Surely there comes a point in a horror film where more permanent, violent means of beating the big baddie don't make the hero a villain in turn? I mean, even Jamie Lee Curtis stabbed Michael Myers in the neck. Kate Siegel fought back particularly well in Hush just a little earlier this year, and I don't think we can argue that she was anything less than heroic. Perhaps the difference here is that Siegel was defending her own home, but Jane Levy in Don't Breathe was initially in the wrong for invading the blind man's home. While certainly the beginning of the film forces us to feel a little sympathy for the blind man, the sudden reveal of his wicked secret about halfway through the film strips him of any moral standing he had with the audience. Then, at the end, when he redirects that wickedness toward our heroine, after torturing and murdering her friends, I heard several people in the theater expressing their own desires to kill him.
Kind of disturbing, that. Sitting in a large, dark room with a mess of strangers, all shrieking together, all hoping to see even more violence and death.
IMDb: Don't Breathe
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