DON'T BREATHE (2016)

Studio:       Screen Gems
Director:    Fede Alvarez
Writer:       Fede Alvarez, Rodo Sayagues
Producer:  Sam Raimi, Rob Tapert, Fede Alvarez
Stars:     Jane Levy, Dylan Minnette, Daniel Zovatto, Stephen Lang

Review Score:

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Summary:

Three thieves encounter much more than they expected after breaking into a dangerous blind man’s home.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Anticipating a presumably easy and harmless heist, thieves Alex, Roxanne (Rocky), and Money break into the home of The Blind Man, a Gulf War soldier who reportedly cashed in on a six-figure settlement. Feeling guilty upon confronting the fact they are taking advantage of a disabled veteran, Alex leaves the house.

Looking for the cash, Money shoots off a door lock. Despite having been drugged, the Blind Man regains consciousness and investigates the commotion. The Blind Man ends up beating and killing Money while Rocky hides in horror.

Rocky watches the Blind Man input his electronic safe code and she retrieves the money when he leaves the room. Alex returns to rescue Rocky while the Blind Man disposes of Money’s body.

The Blind Man realizes there is more than one intruder in his home after finding multiple pairs of shoes left behind so the thieves could tread quietly. The Blind Man checks his safe and discovers his money is missing.

Alex and Rocky find a captive woman behind held prisoner. The woman turns out to be Cindy Roberts, who killed the Blind Man’s daughter in a vehicular manslaughter case. Alex and Rocky try escaping with Cindy, but the Blind Man shoots Cindy when he fires his gun blindly at everyone. The Blind Man continues shooting wildly while chasing Alex and Rocky in the dark.

The Blind Man catches Alex, but his gun runs out of bullets. Alex and Rocky escape the Blind Man, but end up confronting his vicious Doberman. The dog leaps at Alex, causing him to crash through a window. The dog then pursues Rocky as she crawls through air ducts.

Alex regains consciousness and fights with the Blind Man. The Blind Man seemingly stabs Alex before capturing Rocky. The Blind Man confesses that Cindy was pregnant with his baby, as he felt it fair she give him a child in return for the one she took away. The Blind Man prepares to artificially inseminate Rocky with a turkey baster, but Alex recovers and comes to her rescue.

With their blood all over the house, Alex and Rocky are unable to call the cops. They handcuff the Blind Man and look for a way out. The Blind Man escapes his restraints and shoots Alex before Alex can open the front door.

Rocky escapes, but is chased by the dog. Rocky climbs a fence and hides in a car, but realizes that she dropped the bag of money while running. Rocky traps the dog in the car’s trunk only to be captured once again by the Blind Man, who drags her back inside the house.

Rocky manages to beat the Blind Man with a crowbar and he falls down to the basement. Rocky escapes with the money and flees with her kid sister on a train to Los Angeles. There, she sees a newscast reporting that the Blind Man is in stable condition and will be released soon.

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Review:

One thing Fede Alvarez demonstrated with his directorial debut on “Evil Dead” 2013 (review here) is an ability to choreograph a dazzling cinematic assault on the senses like few other contemporary horror filmmakers can.  However, talent for showmanship is not synonymous with talent for storytelling.  With his sophomore outing “Don’t Breathe,” Alvarez again proves that while he can certainly shoot and cut a movie for maximum sleekness, all that visceral flair is only good for an illusion of momentum when the narrative has nowhere substantial to go in the first place.

Hapless hoodlums Alex, Rocky, and Money have an ideal mark in mind for their next big burglary.  A disabled military vet has returned home to Detroit with a six-figure settlement and to the three thieves, he is the baby and his cash is the candy.  What they fail to consider is that him being blind does not diminish his danger.  Once inside the blind man’s home, the trio discovers predator has become prey, and that is only the first table-turning surprise in store as their perfect plan goes up in smoke as well as a very generous spray of blood.

Sound intriguing so far?  “Don’t Breathe” might be, if not for the existence of “The Collector” (review here), “Crush the Skull” (review here), “Intruders” (review here), or any of the other similar “home invasion gone wrong” movies already littering the suburban siege subgenre.

Beaten paths are for beaten films.  There is just enough of a mild mystery on hand regarding where the plot is heading and what might happen next to manufacture initial suspense.  But the movie cannot sustain it since this suspense exists in a vacuum.

A skeletal script leaves “Don’t Breathe” in the lurch to tread a trail of predictable beats, e.g. crawling through ventilation ducts, groping desperately in the dark, crashing through windows, being knocked unconscious, regaining consciousness, momentarily becoming captured, momentarily escaping, becoming captured again, etc.  Without a robust storyline motivating tension, all these setups amount to a heap of empty action good mainly for a cinematographer’s résumé or a stuntman’s demo reel.  For the viewer, it’s a passive experience of simply observing a series of things happening to a handful of unpleasant people.

Fingers claw at armrests when audiences don’t want their heroes in harm’s way.  Except no one in “Don’t Breathe” is worth gnawing a nail over, and that is a huge hump the movie cannot get past.

Anyone nicknamed ‘Money’ is unlikable on principle.  Alex at least exhibits the token “good guy” conscience and Rocky has a boring background of struggling to save her sister from an abusive mother.  No matter what though, they are still three crooks taking advantage of a blind veteran.  Giving them a thieves’ code of honor is nowhere near enough to balance the negative characterizations working against everyone.  Dylan Minnette can ride onscreen goodwill remembered from films like “Goosebumps” (review here) while Stephen Lang does the same with his recognizable screen presence.  Nevertheless, they are still embodying shells with no nobler of a purpose than facilitating visual mayhem.

After an excruciatingly slow setup, “Don’t Breathe” jam packs itself with agonizing action.  What it doesn’t have is any emotional force putting personality behind its punches.  A majority of the wordless moments are just Jane Levy hiding with a hand over her mouth.  When there is dialogue, it consists of lines like, “there’s nothing a man cannot do once he accepts the fact there is no God.”  What does that even mean?  Apparently, it justifies why a man can fire countless bullets in his home without any neighbors calling the police.  Or how two scriptwriters can include a ridiculous twist involving a turkey baster under a mistaken assumption of cleverness without anyone calling “bullsh*t.”

Don’t bother getting excited about “Don’t Breathe.”  Having previously gone by the title “A Man in the Dark,” the movie is a neatly compacted little thriller, but one with a shiny, gold-plated exterior, and hollow, stomach-rumbling interior.

Review Score:  45

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