Normally when I see films at the cinema I go in the early afternoon, when it's a lot less busy (I react badly to crowds). When I went to see Don't Breathe, however, I ended up having to go in the evening and therefore ended up sitting across from a trio who loudly gasped and reacted to just about every tense part of the film. As annoying as this was (and for the most part it really was), it was also a good indicator of just how tense and suspenseful and just damn good this film is.
In Detroit (possibly just down the road from the kids from It Follows), Money, Rocky and Alex are burglars who have worked out a pretty efficient and "safe" method of ripping off houses. This isn't proving to be the most profitable way of doing things, however, and so they form a plan to break into the house of a blind Iraq veteran said to have $300,000 hidden somewhere in his home - more than enough for them to achieve their dream of moving to California. It seems like a simple enough job; unfortunately for the three of them this blind man is far from helpless, and he has secrets in his house he's willing to go to any lengths to keep...
There's actually quite the sub-genre of action films featuring blind ex-soldiers (or just blind people in general) who have trained to be expert fighters with the help of the rest of their senses - Rutger Hauer in Blind Fury is probably the movie example that comes to mind for most people; for TV and comics people there's Daredevil, obviously - but in these stories the blind guy is usually the hero. In Don't Breathe the blind man (known only as "The Blind Man" throughout the film) is well and truly the bad guy, and he and his entire setup make the film the tense and sinister experience it is. He knows everything about his house without ever having to see it, using the rest of his senses to stalk and dispatch the three intruders without a second thought. And just in case the audience might have started to feel any sympathetic towards him because of his backstory (blind, dead daughter), the film keeps everyone on their toes with a couple of further revelations that quickly cure that right away. He is really, really not a good person.
Don't Breathe does some really good stuff with space and shot framing that adds to the tension very well. The Blind Man's ability to silently and suddenly appear in the shot as the camera pans around a room - and he's usually standing right next to one of our protagonists as well, meaning that they either have to freeze and try to make no noise whatsoever or try to quickly move out of his way without him noticing, also in complete silence. There's a scene in a narrow hallway at one point that made me cringe with tension, for example. There's also the inevitable section of the film where the Blind Man turns off all the lights in the basement so that his quarry can "see how [he] sees" which turns out to be incredibly effective because it doesn't use nightvision cameras to achieve the effect, so everything isn't bathed in an unhealthy green glow for once. On the other hand though, there's another repeated camera trick used throughout the film where the shot starts out slightly out of focus and then gradually goes in and out of focus as it pans from left to right, and this effect made my eyes quite sore by the end of it. There's a jump scare at the beginning but it's forgivable because it's the only one that comes out of nowhere; the ones that occur in the rest of the film are perfectly justifiable in the context of the film.
Our three protagonists are also surprisingly likable - even Money who, as well as having a rather ridiculous name, is by far the most mercenary and seemingly uncaring of the trio. Even then he still gets a moment in the film that gives him some surprising extra depth. Alex is the slightly nerdy "nice guy" that a lot of the audience would probably identify with or at least find sympathetic. He also has an unrequited crush on Rocky, which both makes sense in the dynamics of the protagonists and means that no-one would be surprised if he end up being one step away from freedom but goes back for her. And Rocky, of course, is your traditional Final Girl - gender-neutral or slightly masculine name; has personal reasons for doing what she's doing and repeatedly heading back into a horrific situation; and of course she's the last (only) girl standing.
On the subject of the protagonists... Director Fede Alverez seems to have a strange habit of turning one character into a human punching bag who just keeps going regardless of how much punishment he takes. He did it in his remake of The Evil Dead, and he does it here. It's really not an issue and probably only noticeable by people like me, but by the end of the film I was finding that it felt a little bit ridiculous (I felt this way about it in The Evil Dead as well). Overall, however, Don't Breathe is a very, very good film - quite possibly the best new horror film I've seen this year. Go see it.
Comments