Review: Don’t Breathe

Don’t Breathe (15)

USA 2016 88 mins Dir: Fede Alvarez Cast: Stephen Lang, Jane Levy, Dylan Minnette, Daniel Zovatto

If director Fede Alarez fulfilled his ambition to splatter viscera all over the screen in his gore-strewn Evil Dead remake, his latest, Don’t Breathe, is relatively more discreet in terms of violence, although no less grim or ruthless in terms of manipulating the audience.

The movie manages to wring a pleasing amount of twisted pleasure from its self-contained, laser-guided premise. A trio of impoverished young Detroit thieves, Rocky (Jane Levy), Alex (Dylan Minnette) and Money (Daniel Zovatto), all looking to escape their destitute lives, hit on the idea of robbing a blind man’s house to relieve him of the payoff granted in the wake of his daughter’s death. An added plus is the target is protected by the security company of Alex’s father, making access to keys all the easier.

It’s an economical set-up that neatly sketches out our main players, three characters who court a sense of empathy if not exactly sympathy. Levy in particular is excellent as the young mother looking to move her daughter to California – motivation that lends just enough of an emotional spine to her subsequent actions when the house is eventually robbed. The eerie overhead shots of Detroit itself, its skeletal streets branching out into neighbourhoods of eerie desolation, also lend a potent if fleeting sense of topicality.

The movie does an excellent job at toying with our sympathies. Although it initially seems our punkish, anarchic trio will likely do more damage to their blind target than vice versa (particularly when it’s revealed that reckless Money has brought a gun to the operation), the situation soon takes a turn for the unexpectedly horrific when the man in question (superbly played by Avatar‘s Stephen Lang) is in fact a military veteran capable of horrendous violence. With the group trapped inside the house, a desperate battle begins against a foe whose most valued asset is his keen sense of hearing.

It’s a witty inversion of the usual home invasion scenario: what if the villain themselves were blind? With every sound our characters make ringing out as loud as a thunderbolt they must strive all the harder to stay quiet, the air pregnant with a sense of unerring tension for the best part of 90 minutes. Alvarez largely resists the cheap shock tactics so prevalent in modern thrillers to instead make the sudden violation of silence all the more shocking, roving camerawork getting inside the crannies of the house to make the atmosphere all the more frightening.

Of course it’s all utterly ridiculous, with Lang’s character seemingly able to make superhuman leaps from one side of his home to the other in a matter of seconds. Late-stage developments, although enjoyably nasty, do also threaten to devolve into something more gratuitous and less interesting than the first act’s careful application of suspense. Even so, Alvarez’ terrific ability to re-stage familiar shock tactics in fresh new ways (rarely has someone lying on a splintering glass roof been so agonising) keeps the adrenaline and excitement going even when plausibility is seriously challenged – and one is guaranteed to never look at a turkey baster in the same way again.