By Keri O’Shea
If ever you felt cordially invited to loathe a set of characters within the first few minutes of a film, then Don’t Breathe seems to offer it; we’re shown, from the outset, a group of three young housebreakers who use their ill-begotten insider info to get in to well-to-do homes, take as many expensive personal items as they can carry and then flee, though not without deliberately breaking a few things and pissing on the floor. This, combined with the fact that the film elects to use for its very first scene some stark evidence that all is not going to go well for these people, would seem to suggest that Don’t Breathe is rather too ready to offer these thieves up as human sacrifices, and that the film will be the same sort of exercise in futile cruelty as the chronically-pointless Evil Dead remake.
I’m happy to report that this isn’t the case: Fede Alvarez’s more recent venture is a far superior film to Evil Dead, and although he almost can’t help himself but to initially signpost plot devices in a way which suggests he fears the audience are idiots, he soon surpasses this (or at least forgets about it,) providing a tightly-wound home invasion movie which has very few flaws.
Our gang of miscreants – the straightforwardly-loathsome wannabe gangster Money (Daniel Zovatto), his girlfriend and single mother Rocky (Jane Levy) and the guy whose dad conveniently runs a home security firm and thus enables the whole thing, Alex (Dylan Minnette) – have been doing their research, and they’ve happened upon a job that they believe could be the last they ever need to do. Turns out, in a barely-populated area of their city of Detroit, there’s a house possibly filled to the brim with compensation awarded to an elderly veteran after the death of his only daughter in a road accident. Although they’re not certain the money is in there, they convince Alex to bring the keys anyway; discovering that the man (Stephen Lang) is blind gives them some slight pause, but hey, filthy lucre drives them onwards – and we know from one of those klaxon plot development moments that Rocky in particular isn’t simply cruel, she’s desperate, and needs the money to start a new life with her little girl.
All of this rattles along at a good pace, and again, although Alvarez didn’t need to more or less shout at us ‘Hey guys! Look! Household tools!’ or ‘Looky! I’m zooming in on the weapon here, so you know where it is later, okay?’ the interior of the house, where the greatest part of the film takes place, is used to good effect. It’s reminiscent of the ‘old dark house’ idea – a space which conceals more than it reveals, with a wealth of liminal space as well as many dangers for those not in the know. But perhaps what Don’t Breathe excels at is its representation of ‘the man’ who inhabits this space.
The intruders are at first very assured, and to counterbalance this, the man is portrayed as very vulnerable, a father in mourning, and someone with a quality-of-life-limiting disability. We first see him in bed, after all, listening to old videos of his daughter as a child – and if there are any difficulties in finding empathy for the three amigos, then the first scenes with Lang make it seem much more clear to find it for him. In a few deft moves however, the man is no longer simply frail, which is testament to Lang’s excellent performance here; as the housebreakers begin to make their inevitable mistakes, he switches to being a much more ambiguous figure before, ultimately, going beyond this understandable resourcefulness as someone still capable of defending his home, turning increasingly violent and fixated. At his furthest reaches as a character, the man becomes almost supernatural, his damaged eyes made to appear monstrous on-screen, and his abilities to feel his way around in the dark setting him above the young intruders in terms of physical threat. All of this keeps the film fresh and interesting; as the cat-and-mouse turns more grisly, inter-character relationships are entertainingly fluid.
I suspect perhaps that Alvarez was somewhat drunk on the capacity for the film to allow for such dramatic shifts, or else as a modern horror director he felt honour-bound to weave just one more commonplace sub-genre into the narrative, but quite honestly – there’s one plot lurch here which is just not needed, and which catapults ‘the man’ out of the realms of ambiguity and into far more sinister terrain. Of course I’m not going to name and shame it, but it seems to me that this entire sequence needed to hit the cutting room floor, not least because it showcases some notions about human fertility and family planning which are almost charming in their naivety. (Thought speaking of naive – I thought that during this particular scene, the man was making a cup of tea with milk he couldn’t tell was off because, duh, he’s blind! When you see the film, and you’ll know the bit I mean, think of that, and also the fact that I’d be happy to believe a dangerous individual would pause to make a brew halfway through proceedings. The truth of this scene is only scarcely less unlikely, mind.)
Alvarez is, really speaking, a new kid on the block in the horror scene; this is only his second feature after all. Sure, I wasn’t a fan of his first one, but if Evil Dead has done anything beyond itself, then it seems at least to have allowed him to let loose with a story of his own here, albeit one which draws influence from existing films. But drawing influence from existing films is fine, it’s a world away from a re-do, and you can see here that he’s developing his own, rapid-fire, well-realised style. It’s all very encouraging, and Don’t Breathe is a huge step up. If Alvarez can just learn to trust us a little more, as well as remembering that you needn’t crowd your story with material which is too jarring, then I think we could see better and better, equally-entertaining films ahead. I certainly hope that’s the case.
Don’t Breathe is on general release now.