Don't Breathe

Don’t Breathe is the second movie from Fede Alvarez, who successfully resuscitated the Evil Dead franchise a couple of years ago, and for this second helping of terror he’s once again dragging co-conspirator Jane Levy into a fresh hell along with him.

The premise is simple, and the introductory narrative is deftly and expertly delivered in the very first few minutes. Three down on their luck career burglars go for their ‘make or break’ job, deciding to hit the easy target of a local blind war, veteran purported to have thousands of dollars stashed away in his dilapidated Michigan suburban house. The gorgeous opening shot establishes that things aren’t going to go well, and sets the tone for the entire film, from it’s colour palette, right through to its sound design.

The entire film is a technical master-class. Expertly directed, Alvarez moves the camera with a skill and deftness to rival David Fincher, and evokes themes of home invasion like a Panic Room in reverse. The visual foreshadowing is perfect. When the camera lingers on an item, or a locale, it’s for a reason. It might not be apparent straight away, but pay attention. Everything is important (apart from the tattoo thing – I really didn’t get what the ‘last time I’m marking my body’ thing was all about). Alvarez knows when to crank it up, and more importantly where this movie is concerned, when to turn it right down. One thing’s for sure. This movie totally lives up to its title. Expect to find yourself forgetting to breathe as the sound of your own heartbeat crafts a personal internal soundtrack to the extended sequences of tension, claustrophobia, and silence.

It’s almost consistently surprising, if not quite terrifying, and much like the Evil Dead re-do, there are times when it doesn’t go far enough in ramping up the terror levels. The set piece nicked from Spielberg is a great example, and I sit wondering if a horror movie can ever really scare me ever again?

If there’s a flaw to the movie it is deep rooted in the premise of the story, and what I've come to calling 'Attack the Block' syndrome. How can I as a viewer have any empathy towards these characters when they have no redeeming traits? How am I suppose to care about a bunch of scumbags who are fully prepared to invade an old man’s house and steal all his money (even if said old man turns out to be a murdering psycho)? The narrative attempts to solve this by throwing us a couple of twists to make us feel better about our teenage ne’er-do-wells, but an uncomfortable use of potential violation (which I always feel uneasy with being presented as entertainment) cuts close to pulling me out and away from the movie as a whole. Inevitably by the end it’s become a standard slasher flick complete with ‘final girl’ trope and ambiguous ‘is it really all over’ ending.

What Don’t Breathe does succeed in doing is delivering a movie that is harsh, bruising, and for the most part, lives on the edge of a reflex trigger pull. With no supernatural element to the story, the movie is at it’s best when it doesn’t preach a right or wrong message, but instead dwells on the moral ambiguity of everyone involved, and presents the message that maybe us humans are the biggest monsters of them all.