Burglars alarmed
Three young crooks get more than they bargained for in new thriller Don’t Breathe
Don’t Breathe
(out of 4) Starring Stephen Lang, Jane Levy, Dylan Minnette and Daniel Zovatto. Directed by Fede Alvarez. Opens Friday at major theatres. 88 minutes. 14A
Horror movie fans know the surest route to disaster is for a character to declare a dodgy plan to be simple and without danger.
“It’s going to be a piece of cake,” someone foolishly says near the start of Don’t
Breathe, a crudely effective home-invasion chiller set to topple Suicide Squad from its box-office perch this weekend.
The aforementioned plan, which quickly proves to be anything but a treat for its perpetrators, is as brazen as the drone camera of director Fede Alvarez, whose lens floats past the rundown houses of “ghost town” Detroit where the action is situated.
Young break-in artists Rocky (Jane Levy), Alex (Dylan Minnette) and Money (Daniel Zovatto) make an OK but illegal living robbing the homes of the rich, using stolen alarm codes to evade detection. They’re about to make their biggest score yet, one that could allow them to quit the burglar biz for good.
They’re going to steal from a blind Gulf War veteran the several hundred thousand dollars he won in a court settlement following the car-crash death of his only child. Paranoid about banks, he’s stashed the cash in his house.
Lest anyone feel too sympathetic for the war vet, the script by Alvarez and Rodo Sayagues gives rooting interest in singlemom Rocky’s desire to flee a lousy domestic situation and take her daughter to California.
And the vet, played by Avatar hard-nut Stephen Lang, proves to be anything but the pushover he was expected to be. Rocky, Alex and Money must fight for their lives as the home invasion turns into a home lockdown, learning the hard way why the blind man values his privacy.
The movie is actually far more frightening than the Evil Dead remake that Alvarez and Sayagues previously teamed for in 2013, which also had an actor (Levy) and a producer (Sam Raimi) in common.
Where Evil Dead dealt with supernatural mayhem, Don’t Breathe trades in the all-too-believable terror of being trapped in a house where a nothing-to-lose exsoldier is exercising his legal right to defend his abode.
It could almost be a silent movie, with the eerie electronic score being broken mainly by the sound of shuffling feet and barely stifled cries, as the youth desperately try to evade a wily foe who doesn’t need eyes to get around.
And when the lights go out, as you know they will, the playing field suddenly levels.
This is a movie where every jump scare is worthy of a shriek.