Fede Alvarez delivered a ghastly, gory spectacle with 2013’s Evil Dead. After that, he was ready to show that he could do horror in a whole different way.
At its peak don’t breathe is just as awkward and uncomfortable as Evil Dead. But building it up is a far less blood-soaked affair. In fact, Don’t Breathe would be a deliberate attempt to create a bloodless terror experience that relies more on dramatic suspense than supernatural spice.
Released on this day in 2016, Don’t Breathe tells the story of Rocky (Jane Levy from Evil Dead), a struggling young woman who is convinced she is helping to break into the home of a blind man (Stephen Lang from Avatar) being involved can create a better life for you and your sister. Together with her boyfriend and his boyfriend, they enter the blind man’s house and hope for an easy result. The invaders get more than they bargained for when they discover the resident is anything but helpless.
The setup makes it feel like a modern take on films like David Fincher’s Panic Room and the Audrey Hepburn thriller Wait Until Dark. It has a lot in common with those Home Invasion fights, and the Mike Flanagan film Hush has similar ideas, but shifts the demeaning sympathy for the blind man in Don’t Breathe moving towards the delightfully disgusting finale things back towards a slasher experience. Don’t Breathe quietly drifts into different genres.
breath of mildness
Photo credit: Screen Gems
In 2021, Alavrez’s longtime writing partner Rodo Sayagues directed a sequel that shifted perspective on The Blind Man, years after the first film, which saw him rescue an orphaned girl he was raising. The change in focus angered many fans of the original, and some found it boring compared to its predecessor.
Alvarez then directed The Girl in the Spider’s Web, with Claire Foy playing computer hacker Lisbeth Salander. It didn’t have the impact of other entries in the series created by the late Stieg Larsson, nor did it reach the heights of Don’t Breathe. Alvarez will next take on his biggest franchise yet, however, as he’s behind the camera for the first alien movie to be made since Disney’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox, Alien: Romulus.
And if Fede Alvarez can bring the gory streak of Evil Dead and the cat-and-mouse tension of Don’t Breathe to a new Alien movie, it could be the best entry we’ve seen in decades have.
Source : www.comingsoon.net