Don’t Breathe dir. by Fede Alvarez (review)

Home, we tell ourselves, is a sanctuary and a refuge: a safe space whose walls and doors keep the outside world at bay and shield us from whatever might seek to do us harm. Tales of homes besieged—or, worse, invaded—by outsiders with evil intent are, therefore, staples of the horror, suspense, and comedy genres: as old as fairy tales and folklore, and as modern as films such as Panic Room (2002) and The Purge (2013).

Regardless of genre, however, home-invasion stories typically follow a familiar emotional arc, taking the audience from dread (as the threat becomes apparent) to despair (as the magnitude of the threat becomes manifest) to triumph (as the protagonist, gathering wits and improvised weapons, fights back). The cartoon violence of John Hughes’ Home Alone (1990) and the grotesquely realistic violence of Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs (1971) are worlds apart, but—in the context of their respective stories—fulfill the same narrative function. They signal that the tide of battle has turned, that the invaders are now at the mercy of those they sought to victimize, and that the audience is free to relax—even cheer—as the protagonist (now hero) takes revenge.

In Don’t Breathe, filmmaker Fede Alvarez deftly upends the conventions of the home-invasion genre by moving the pivotal moment of reversal earlier in the film, and allowing the shifting balance of power to complicate the familiar narrative arc. The result is a piece of relentless, savage horror presented with an artful panache that places it just this side of the movie it most resembles: Marcus Nispel’s remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003).

The story begins with three small-time burglars—Rocky (Jane Levy), Alex (Dylan Minnette), and Money (Daniel Zovatto)—deciding to rob the home of a blind, reclusive Gulf War veteran (Stephen Lang) lives alone in a blighted neighborhood of inner-city Detroit. Rumor has it that the accidental death of the man’s daughter brought him a small fortune: $30,000 in cash, which he keeps secreted somewhere in his house. The trio breaks in, confident they can find the money and leave before the Blind Man (so billed in the credits, and never named in the film) awakens, but their plan quickly goes awry. The man’s preternatural senses alert him to their presence and enable him to stalk the those who are stalking him. The predators become the prey.

The film now begins to play upon the audience’s sympathies like a demented pianist attacking a keyboard. One cultural cue after another invites sympathy for the Blind Man. Not merely a veteran and would-be crime victim, he is aging, disabled, grieving, and—except for his emotionally tainted treasure-trove—evidently poor, trapped in a dark, decaying house he can no longer maintain. Once he begins to fight back, however, Alvarez reveals another side of him. As he brutally attacks the three hapless thieves with blazing guns and heavy tools the audience is invited to shift its sympathy from him to them. His from victim to killer—from a cowed homeowner to a crazed recluse in a home-turned-deathtrap—is all the more startling because of its suddenness, which confounds genre convention. It is as if the terrified, blind apartment dweller played by Audrey Hepburn in Wait Until Dark (1967) turns to face her attacker and, in that instant, is revealed to be Norman Bates’s knife-wielding “mother.”

The transformation complete and the old man’s true nature revealed, Don’t Breathe moves nimbly from being a home-invasion suspense film to being a house-as-deathtrap horror film.

Its second half is a nightmarish flight and pursuit through every room, attic, basement, trap door, and corridor. When the lights are on, the robbers have the advantage; when they are off, it tilts toward the old man. The balance of power that shifts with the balance of light and darkness is a clear homage to Wait Until...