Don’t Breathe is a tiresome piece of work, but that’s for good and bad reasons. On one hand, the genuine adrenaline that the film forces you to use up is exhausting and even nauseating. Considering that this is a horror film that’s all good, though. The other tiresome reason is, unfortunately due to directional tact the film becomes much more sloppy than it should be. No, that’s not to say that Fede Alvarez is a bad director, or that his direction of this film is particularly weak, it’s only to say that under the circumstances direction is related to tone and here the tonal contrivances really show. The reason for this is because of the way that the story plays out. Three robbers, the main character being a mother named Rocky (Jane Levy), attempt to rob the house of a blind man (Steven Lang), only to realize that he is extremely fatal. As the night goes on, more and more is revealed and the shocking truth comes out. That actually makes for an shocking if a little floaty premise. Only Rocky and the Blind Man are given any motivation, letting us know that the others are expendable, but it’s intense and compelling stuff, especially since Alvarez pulls his greatest tricks out of the bag at the beginning of the film. He stages an early tracking shot that displays tools that will later be used in brutal ways parallelling the house establishing shot in Panic Room. His best little addition to this is that he assigns a sound effect to almost every item that will be used in the bloodshed. This calls a very intense focus on sound in the film, matching the Blind Man, but also gives a semblance of structure for the rest of the film. Subconsciously, when a noise is heard it means that that item will appear causing a large amount of dread. The main problem with the film as it goes along is that Alvarez doesn’t continue this early focus. The premise calls for a continually twisting plot, so soon things just start forcibly happening, as more and more random situations keep beating the hell out of the robbers. It all seems a little much, and some of it seems unnecessary as suspenseful as it all is. The film’s turning point and scariest scene is shocking but it is never grounded in the rest of what’s going on. It was never really set up. When the items that were signaled by the sound effects do appear, Alvarez smartly pulls off his intelligent trick, but he does it sloppily. Soon, the forced nature of the continuing events of the story start to really show. Lacking the directorial focus that was set up the film just gets more tiresome as it comes along. Don’t Breathe is a fine film though, and that’s on the back of both Alvarez and the actors he’s brought together. The events of Don’t Breathe are horrifying and the actors perfectly pull them off, but it’s how the events relate to the actors that truly scare. Steven Lang is scary as hell, but a female-centric exploitation focussed on recent horrors of the same form are scarier than anything that Lang or Alvarez throw on screen. The overall twist of the movie is terrifying and sad bring a dreaded feeling to the movie. If anyone should be making Resident Evil movies it’s Fede Alvarez. Paired with excellent performances from the protagonist, her partner and Lang, despite its flaws Don’t Breathe is horrifically believable. Don’t Breathe doesn’t always use the directional flourishes it has to its benefit but it’s still a disturbing and just fine ride. As a buckled down thriller it’s certainly worth 88 minutes. Don't Breathe gets an 8 out of 10.
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December 2017
CategoriesAuthorHello welcome to FilmAnalyst. My name is Stephen Tronicek, and I really like movies. This is a way to get my opinions out to people. Thank you for visiting. |