By Brett Blake DON’T BREATHE is a movie that will benefit from lower expectations. It is an incredibly solid little chiller, anchored by truly excellent direction and strong performances which elevate the subject matter... but it is far from the masterpiece some have hailed it to be. We follow a trio of small-time robbers, Rocky (Jane Levy), Alex (Dylan Minnette), and Money (Daniel Zovatto), who plot to break into the home of a reclusive blind man (Stephen Lang) who is supposedly sitting on a cash fortune. Once inside the man’s home, things go south almost immediately and the friends begin to realize that their mark has more up his sleeve than they could have ever imagined. More than anything, what we’ve got here is an inverse WAIT UNTIL DARK, the classic thriller where Audrey Hepburn plays a blind woman being harassed by a trio of sinister criminals who proceed to invade her apartment. Broadly speaking, DON’T BREATHE turns the Hepburn character into the source of the danger, rather than the recipient of it. Instead of the blind character being defenseless against home invasion, Lang’s character is deadly competent and efficient. For some, this simple twist on the home invasion formula has been enough to label the movie an ingeniously-plotted exercise, but honestly... the script is easily the weakest element of the film. It’s by no means bad, there are no unforgivable gaffes or plot holes, but as a whole, the narrative is pretty standard stuff, even taking its subversion of various tropes into account. There is a delightfully sick interlude that arrives out of nowhere about two-thirds of the way through the movie, and it’s cringe-inducing in the very best way, but that’s really the extent of the plot showing us anything we haven’t already seen in some form in other stories. Where the movie really does excel is in the direction. Director Fede Alvarez brings the same level of intensity to DON’T BREATHE that he did to 2013’s EVIL DEAD remake. There’s a “go for the jugular” quality here, a feeling of the movie grabbing you by the throat and slowly squeezing the life out of you. In only a couple of films, Alvarez displays a mastery of tone, knowing where and how to ramp things up. He is obviously no director-for-hire, no mere journeyman. This is a guy with a certain amount of vision, the technical skill required to execute that vision at a high level, and the confidence to say to the audience, “I’m in control here, now watch this.” He joins the likes of directors Robert Eggers (THE WITCH), Jeremy Saulnier (GREEN ROOM), Jennifer Kent (THE BABADOOK), Mike Flanagan (HUSH), and David Robert Mitchell (IT FOLLOWS) as part of the most promising group of up-and-coming genre filmmakers to emerge at the same time since perhaps the 1980s. The staging of the more suspenseful sequences in DON’T BREATHE is absolutely wonderful; Alvarez allows the camera to play with space and depth in compelling ways, things that greatly heighten the feeling of claustrophobia which overtakes the film. He creates mini setpieces of suspense, all of which have their own little crescendos and climaxes that somehow manage to fit into the overall escalation going on. I don’t want to oversell it, because I can certainly see a scenario where the more jaded horror fans in the audience will just shrug this movie off, but I also believe that the sustained tension - particularly once the story moves into its second half - might be too much for some in the audience to stomach. This is a good, exciting thing, and it’s what serious genre tales should do: put you on edge and make you uncomfortable. DON’T BREATHE does that. Whatever the movie’s narrative limitations are, the tonal cohesion and cinematic craft displayed by Alvarez are enough to compensate. It also doesn’t hurt the movie to have some effective performances carrying the day, either. As was the case in Alvarez’s EVIL DEAD remake, Jane Levy is put through absolute hell in the film, and she’s incredibly convincing; in order for the audience to side with someone who is - fundamentally - a criminal, we have to buy that Rocky is a character desperate for a change, and Levy conveys that perfectly. Dylan Minnette provides steady and level-headed support as the “everyman”-type in the film, the guy who understands just how badly their situation could end up. And then there’s Stephen Lang as the blind man, looking at times like an archetypal boogeyman with his dead eyes and vacant expression; Lang brings an impressive and imposing physicality to the role, and he really allows us to believe that he could pull off the kinds of things he pulls off in this film as someone who’s lost his sight. A quick word about the musical score: Roque Baños reunites with director Alvarez after EVIL DEAD, and delivers a really effective underscore to accompany the visuals. In contrast to the operatic orchestral sound he conjured up for EVIL DEAD, Baños here goes into more droning, industrial, and atonal directions. It may not end up making for the greatest listen on the album, but it fits the film perfectly. Adding on to what is quickly turning into a banner year for horror, DON’T BREATHE delivers shocks and a level of intensity that most fans of the genre should be satisfied by. The top-notch direction and acting paper over any blandness in the plotting, and though I didn’t completely love the movie, I liked it a lot.
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