In the beginning it was Evil Dead. A movie that scared me witless when I was only 12 years old. First attempt to watch it was a total failure as I only saw the first part, was too frightened!
Couple of years later, I gathered my courage boosted by the presence of my siblings and the daylight of course, to watch it with the sequels. And after more than a decade, I went "solo" to the cinema to watch the remake, because my people of friends of family were and are still unable to enjoy good frights, something I savour thoroughly.
This long introduction is simply written to point out at the two genius behind that masterpiece, Sam Raimi who founded Evil Dead franchise and Fede Alvarez who made the remake, and to say that when those two met, the outcome was tremendously terrific for Don't Breathe' proves to be a master horror thriller.
Indeed a master horror from the opening until the closing scene, tension and horror create together a chilling ambiance and an uneasy feeling of entrapment where every breath is hold in a dreadful anticipation of what is coming next.
In Don't breathe, we meet Roxie, Alex and Money, three delinquents living off the things they steal from the houses they burglarized, houses secured by the company where Alex's father works. When the three decided to go to a new level, their next target would be a blind war veteran who is living on top of 300,000 dollars, received as a settlement money for the death of his daughter who was killed in a car accident by a reckless wealthy woman.They think that this one will be an "easy" robbery that would start by breaking into the blind man's house which is located in an abandoned block in Detroit and by drugging him and his Rottweiler, the money would be theirs. Little did they know that by entering the den of the lion, their worst nightmare is going to materialize, and the roles will be swapped and the prey becomes the hunter in chase of every escaping breath they draw.
It is important to mention that the audience will be left with mixed feelings towards unsympathetic characters from both sides, protagonists and antagonists. Money is an arrogant idiotic criminal, Alex, is trying to gain the audience trust because he is obliged to go along with them because he is in love with Roxie, who is the least despicable, and he wants to help her to get her little sister out of a miserable reality of a neglectful mother and her alcoholic boyfriend. As for the blind man, an emotional confusion will fill us as we remain for a long time unable to define exactly how we really feel about him. Is it sympathy, pity, anger, hate, fear? Shall we give him excuses for his revenge or should we be in great shock about his reactions? The performances of Jane Levy as Roxie and Stephen Lang as the blind man deserve to be highly praised.; we are thrown in their world, following carefully their acts. In one scene we are fighting to hold tight our breath with Roxie, imitating her fear involuntarily by covering our mouths with both hands, petrifying in our seats for fear to be heard by Lang who excels in the world of the blind, where his world of darkness rules and all his concentration are directed to every sound around him, to which his body language perfectly reflexes with each muscle and twitch.
The setting and premises are nothing but the old house with his bolts and locked doors in an abandoned derelict neighborhood and those elements are used cleverly to intensify a feeling of trapping and isolation from the outside world. Once the three were in, the audience knew that they are trapped with no way to get out. Very efficient cinematography and visuals from a heated chase, a struggle and fight, black pitch darkness, along with a astonishing soundtrack of hard breathing, creaks betraying dead silence, nasty barking of a dog, deep shouts of enraged anger mixed with pitiful sorrow and muffled whimpers and cries.
Movie lovers, I can simply say that Don't Breathe is your movie of 2016. Check it out now.
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