Don't Breathe, directed by Fede Alvarez (who also directed the Evil Dead remake in 2013), is an inventive twist on the sub-genre of home invasion films. In Don't Breathe, the predators become the prey when three young adults who break into homes and steal valuables decide to break into the home of a blind army veteran (Stephan Lang) who happens to be sitting on a load of cold, hard cash.
The trio of burglars each have a particular reason why they want to commit this act of robbery--Rocky (Jane Levy) dreams of escaping her rundown home in Detroit with her little sister and heading for California; Money (yes, that's the character's name...Money. Played by Daniel Zovatto) is in it purely for the...well, money; and timid Alex (Dylan Minnette) is in love with--and firmly friend-zoned by--Rocky, so he'll follow her like a puppy wherever.
They believe it will be easy to rob this man blind (heh), thinking he's a defenseless recluse. But when they finally bust into his veritable fortress of a house, they realize that he is the very opposite of a weak, scared old man. And despite being blind, this old SOB is going to fight back.
I'm going to go into details, including spoilers, below. But I'll say that even though Don't Breathe is very effective as a thriller--the setting is incredibly claustrophobic, making the audience feel like they are trapped in the house with the burglars--I had to knock it down a couple grade levels for two reasons. First, I felt like you had to suspend your disbelief A LOT in this movie. When it comes to the horror genre, I'm cool with a fair amount of suspension of disbelief. Teens haunted by a ghost? Sure, sounds good to me. A monster stalks a single mother? Bring it on. But when a movie is set in "the real world", I get pickier. Stephan Lang's nameless character (called "The Blind Man" in the credits) is a little TOO fierce to be believed. Sure, he's an army vet, so it makes sense that he can protect himself and fight, but this motherfucker is portrayed with Katniss Everdeen-levels of speed and agility.
Secondly, the film has some twists and turns (described below) that start out as genuinely intriguing and then just take a nosedive into needlessly creepy and WTF.
But I don't regret spending matinee prices on Don't Breathe --it's a fun popcorn flick that will thrill you.
Grade B-
***
Detailed spoilers below!
So the first half of Don't Breathe is pretty much exactly how'd you expect it to be if you saw the movie trailer--the burglars decide to rob this guy (by the way, who actually keeps a shitload of cash in their home? If this blind guy is so smart, why doesn't he get a bank account?) and then they have to spend a ton of time breaking in since this dude's house is a fortress. There are bars on all the windows, a ton of locks of every door, and a vicious dog to contend with. Once they get in, it's a miracle they don't wake this guy up immediately with all the noise they make. But they're in for a surprise when he wakes up and starts kicking ass.
The blind guy catches Money trying to pry open a bolted door in the house, disarms him, and blows him away nice as you please (good--Money is an incredibly annoying character). But because Rocky and Alex haven't made any noise, the blind guy doesn't know they're there...yet. He ends up locking all of them inside the house, with no easy escape--and when he senses that there are two more burglars inside the house, well, as I said above, the predators become the prey and the blind man hunts them throughout his own house.
I thought this twist was really good...but it quickly turned...umm, weird...when you find out later that the reason the guy kidnapped her was because, as he says, "She took my child away from me...I thought it was only fair she give me another one." o_0
Yes, it turns out that this old bastard kidnapped the woman who killed his daughter (accidentally killed!) and impregnated her with his own sperm. After Rocky and Alex attempt to rescue her, which leads to her getting shot and killed by the blind guy, the blind guy manages to capture Rocky and ends up trussing her up in a sling. This is when he explains the whole impregnation thing to Rocky, while--I shit you not--pulling a jar of his own semen out of a little refrigerator, warming it up, and using a turkey baster to attempt to impregnate her (don't worry--Alex, the friendzoned dude, bludgeons the blind guy before he can slip that ol' baster into Rocky's youthful, fertile womb).
This was where the movie lost me. I liked the twist where it turns out the blind guy is nutty kidnapper, but a nutty kidnapper who forcibly impregnates women? Is that really necessary? And seeing Rocky all tied up in a sling while blind guy cuts open her pants to shove a turkey baster into her VAGINA--is that REALLY necessary? Or is is using rape and reproductive coercion as entertainment?
Oh, and here's the kicker--as the blind guy prepares his own nut to impregnate Rocky he explains "I'm not a rapist. I never forced myself on her." HAHAHAHAHA. That's gold. Yeah, I guess because you didn't use your dick, it doesn't count as rape/sexual assault. Motherfucker, you shoved a baster filled with sperm up a girl's cooch in an attempt to force her to become pregnant against her will while she was tied up in a homemade sex swing. That's about as rapey as it gets.
Well, the movie doesn't end after Friendzone Alex saves Rocky from becoming a mother against her will. There's like, 20 minutes left of the film...the dog I mentioned earlier plays a big role (he serves as the Chekhov's gun of the movie). Blah blah blah. But I don't really care about going into all that. Really, I just wanted to write about the wack-a-doodle impregnation twist and how gross and stupid it is. Without it, Don't Breathe gets a solid B. With it, I demote the film to
Grade: B-
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