Don't Breathe (2016) - A Solid Survival Flick (And a few words about it's sequel)

Don't Breathe (2016), knows how to drop just a couple of disturbing ideas down that will stick with you for long time after watching. Like Occulus (2013), there'll be some objects that you tie to the film.

In the film, we follow a group of teenage thieves, looking to score big on one last job. They pick a seemingly easy target, a blind man who lives alone, with a safe full of cash. Unfortunately, said blind man is a lot more capable of defending himself than they thought. What follows is a desperate attempt to escape from their own home invasion.

Filmmaker Fede Alvarez, wanted to create a film that was an inverse of the usual horror trope of a home invader, by following the home invaders instead. And yes, I suppose that is what we get, but it doesn't feel like a huge reversal of tropes. It's established early on that the group all desperately need this money; they're a bit rough around the edges, but ultimately, we're on their side. We want to see this plan succeed.

And we want to see it succeed even more, the more we learn about their supposed victim, Norman Nordstrum (played by Stephen Lang, delivering a truly menacing performance). Nordstrum has turned his disability into a superpower and has the uncanny knack of hearing absolutely everything - this, and his army training, helps him turn the tide on the teens. It's hard to feel sympathy for his utter brutality from the outset; he may be the supposed victim, but it's difficult to see him as anything other than a villain.

This only gets worse when it's discovered what Nordstrum is keeping in his basement, and his further plans. It's a viscerally uncomfortable moment of irredeemable behaviour and a hypocrisy even the Jigsaw killer would think ridiculous.

So, no, it doesn't feel like there's a successful reversal of tropes at play. It quickly becomes a story of escaping a killer (and something a whole lot worse), which is typical of the genre. We want our final girl Rocky (Jane Levy) to deal out some justice, as we always do. In the light of Nordstrum's actions, some teens desperate for cash (to escape abusive households), isn't much of an ethical debate. (Stealing is not a crime equal to murder - especially not from that guy.)

The film itself, though, delivers on the tension well. There are several nail-biting scenes of our protagonists being quick and clever against their disadvantage of being in the dark and having to be silent, and the use of night vision adds to the suspense. The suddenness of the first kill is also fittingly impactful, and a sharp tone change for the rest of the film.

Unfortunately, the game of cat and mouse starts to drag. There comes a point where it gets irritating to think Rocky is finally safe, only for Nordstrum, or his lethal hounds, to pop up again. Sometimes, enough is enough and we can wrap up the chase sequence.

Levy delivers a strong performance as Rocky, showing the complexities of the character with great nuance, considering she's fighting for her life for most of the runtime.

The film falls short a little on believability. Nordstrum becomes an unbeatable killer to rival Michael Myers in a way that doesn't fit the setting the film has established. Sometimes, it's better to not have a killer always returns moment.

Overall, Don't Breathe is a well-edited, tensely made thriller with a few truly horrific moments that's certainly worth checking out.

Five years later, they made a sequel. Alvarez seemed to want to reverse his reversal, and this time, we follow Nordstrum. He has a daughter now, and when she's taken, he'll do everything in his superpowers to get her back.

There's a great big problem with Don't Breathe 2 (2021). It's that it wants Nordstrum to be redeemable, in any way. The events of the first film make this utterly impossible. It's really hard to be on this guys side at all, after his brutal sexual assault, and that we're being asked to screams that the directors and writers are all men. That it plays coy with how this man has a daughter is the nail in the coffin for the premise.

It tries to justify itself by creating villains that are somehow even more darkly evil than Nordstrum himself. This means they're absurdly inhuman caricatures and the film falls further into ridiculousness. We've lost all the suspense of the first movie in exchange for a Taken parody with a despicable protagonist. (Some things are just unforgiveable.)

In the end, Don't Breathe 2 certainly isn't worth the time - it's one of the rare times I've turned my back on a film half an hour in. Going by the synopsis, which abandons any and all logic about how humans work, it was certainly the right decision.