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In his book “Leviathan,” English philosopher Thomas Hobbes infamously described a human life in the anarchic state of nature as “nasty, brutish, and short.” As it happens, that’s also a pretty good description of “Don’t Breathe,” a high-tension thriller that crosses over into horror.
Director Fede Alvarez (the “Evil Dead” remake) co-wrote the script with Rodo Sayagues, and it’s entirely possible they had Hobbes in mind when they gave one of their characters the line “There is nothing a man can’t do once he accepts the fact that there is no God.” That line should give you some idea what to expect from this grindhouse flick, an “audience movie” for that audience that loves to scream and giggle at the revolting.
“Don’t Breathe” takes place in our modern ghost city of Detroit, Michigan. There, a young trio of thieves knocks off homes for pricy items to fence. Alex (Dylan Minnette) holds the line at grabbing cash, fearing a major larceny charge should the team be apprehended, but his partners Rocky (Jane Levy) and Money (Daniel Zovatto) have no such qualms. They convince a reluctant Alex to go for one big score: the home of a Gulf War army veteran, where they believe he has squirreled away his $300,000 settlement for the killing of his only daughter in a reckless-driving incident. In casing the joint, the crooks note three items of interest: the neighborhood is entirely deserted save for the veteran (good news), their intended victim is blind (better news), and the home is patrolled by a vicious, foaming-at-the-mouth Rottweiler (well, you can’t win ’em all).
Alvarez and Sayagues set the stage, then, for a latter-day “Wait Until Dark”: a home-invasion nail-biter with a blind victim fighting back. It’s a formula we haven’t seen for a while, and it works like gangbusters, especially since “The Blind Man” (Stephen Lang of “Avatar”) is sightless but hardly disabled. Alvarez masterfully sustains tension in thriller mode, partly by shooting slick Steadicam moves and showing restraint in cutting (Alvarez seems to have taken a lesson or two from David Fincher’s similarly themed “Panic Room”). In one especially effective, odds-evening sequence (after “Silence of the Lambs”), Alvarez devises his own style of night vision (which turns the wide-eyed ingénues’ pupils and irises unnervingly big and black).
Twists abound to complicate the basic premise, and for a while, the script intriguingly pits antiheroes (the thieves) against a kind of antivillain (“The Blind Man” defending his home), with Lang’s masterfully fearsome performance upping the film’s game. Unfortunately, once “Don’t Breathe” detonates its big twist, it subtlety goes out the window, the spell is broken, and the film’s implausibilities begin to be more distracting. It’s at this turning point that some audience members will feel the film stops being fun while others will feel the fun has started in earnest. In both cases, Alvarez holds the audience in the palm of his hand, but when he dons his horror cap, “Don’t Breathe” turns disgusting for those with a low tolerance for tasteless shocks.
Rated R for terror, violence, disturbing content, and language including sexual references. One hour, 28 minutes.
