Starring: Jane Levy, Dylan Minnette, Daniel Zovatto, Stephen Lang
Distributor: Sony Pictures
Runtime: 88 mins. Reviewed in Sep 2016
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There will come a point when you’re watching ‘Don’t Breathe’ when find that you’re holding your own breath, such is the effectiveness of this taut, nasty horror-thriller. It does what it says on the can, and it does so with strong performances and inventive direction.
Money (Daniel Zovatto), Rocky (Jane Levy), and Alex (Dylan Minnette) are three Detroit youths who spend their days breaking into houses to score luxury goods, items which they pass on to their fence at bargain bin prices. Alex’s Dad works for a security company, meaning they can access the keys and alarm codes to houses that they’re casing. They’re pretty switched on, and tailor their stolen goods to ensure that they don’t hit the $10,000 ceiling which would elevate their crimes to grand larceny. However, Rocky wants a big score so she can take her little sister to California, and away from the clutches of their deadbeat mother. Their fence tells Money that the only way to avoid getting undermined by low prices is to steal cash, and passes on the details of a potential victim.
Their big score is a blind war veteran who lives in a large house tucked away in an abandoned area. A few years earlier, his daughter was killed in a car accident by a rich girl, and the man was paid off out of court by the girl’s family. Rumour suggests that the large settlement is hidden somewhere in his house, and so the trio break in one night to try their luck searching for it. Once inside, the camera fluidly roams the house as the youths search through the sparse rooms; this is a classically executed sequence, shot in one take by DP Pedro Luque, as the disembodied perspective of the audience floats along in a choreographed dance with the actors, paying momentary attention to things of interest which you know will re-enter the story later – a hammer, a section of discoloured plasterboard…
Suddenly, just as the thieves are trying to force their way into a heavily locked door, the blind man appears. His ostensible helplessness falls away with an astonishing turn of violence, and Money is killed. Knowing that the fatality was not alone but unable to quickly locate any surviving burglars, the blind man closes off any exits, and a cat and mouse game for survival through his home begins. Rocky and Alex must use their wits and guts to outsmart and outlast their hunter, but he may turn out to be more sinister and capable than either of them imagined.
Stephen Lang plays the blind man with ferocious intensity. His prowling movements, Bane-esque affected voice, and swiveling head’s responsiveness to his nonvisual senses are positively bestial, and a number of shocking narrative developments create a disturbing psychology to underscore his horror. Though Daniel Zovatto has little time to leave an impression (beyond a startling resemblance and similar intensity to a post-‘Transformers’ Shia LaBeouf), his co-conspirators are well acquitted. Dylan Minnette, playing the initially cool-headed member of the group, is terrific, exuding bewildered panic once the going gets tough and very much selling his character’s raw terror. Likewise for Jane Levy, who conveys more with her quavering eyes than any line of dialogue ever could.
As punishing, gut-wrenching (and occasionally farfetched) twists begin to pile up, audiences may question their ability to sit through the film, but Alvarez (who co-wrote with Rodo Sayagues) manages to pepper enough inventive set pieces into the film to maintain interest (a lesson he may have learned after his ‘Evil Dead’ remake descended into a literal downpour of blood for the final act). I won’t spoil its function in the plot, but a scene pitting the survivors against the blind man in a pitch black cellar immediately springs to mind.
At just 88 minutes, ‘Don’t Breathe’ is a streamlined exercise in genre filmmaking. Detractors will criticise its forays into bad taste, but its devotees will thrill at its refreshing twist on a familiar story.
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