DON’T BREATHE // LEAVES YOU GASPING

DON’T BREATHE // LEAVES YOU GASPING

Horror movies have grown increasingly lazier these days with their reliance on jump-scares to terrify audiences. As the exception to this rule, “Don’t Breathe” shuns jump-scares and serves up a frightening storyline.  “Evil Dead” writer & director Fede Alvarez and co-scripter Rodo Sayagues have created a superior, spine-tingling saga of suspense, sparse on dialogue, but swarming with surprises that will make your skin crawl during its tense 88 minutes.  Mind you, one of those standard-issue scary movie tropes remains intact in this gripping, atmospheric opus.  Similarly, you’ll experience as much paranoia as the protagonists who find themselves trapped and intimidated in this home invasion thriller.  The set-up is incredibly simple.  Three teens have a foolproof plan for burglary.  Equipped with the security codes and ways to silence alarms, this trio is prepared to steal anything of value.  A golden opportunity lands in their laps.  Not only do they have a chance to score drastically with one big haul, but also they may never have to resort to burglary again!  Not-surprisingly, things go dreadfully sideways almost immediately.  They have learned about a blind military veteran, injured by grenade splinters in Iraq, living alone in an isolated neighborhood, who has a million dollars stashed in a safe.  If the burglars, two single guys and a single-mom with a kindergarten-aged daughter, can pull this off, they will be on easy street. Just when everything seems within their grasp, they encounter their worst nightmare.  If you’ve seen the trailer for “Don’t Breathe,” you may have been reminded of the climactic scene in “Silence of the Lambs” when an FBI agent stumbled around in a dark creepy house while a serial killer equipped with night vision goggles relentlessly stalked her.  “Don’t Breathe” appropriates that predicament, but expands it radically.  Alvarez and Sayagues display imagination galore in this claustrophobic cat and mouse nail-biter, and the suspense never slackens, even after you think the filmmakers have run out of tricks to torment you.

Alex (Dylan Minnette of “Goosebumps”) exploits inside information from his father’s security firm so Rocky (Jane Levy of “Nobody Walks”), her boyfriend Money (Daniel Zovatto of “It Follows”), and he can burglarize houses with little chance of being caught.  They have an amazing track record, and they haven’t blown any of these opportunities.  “Don’t Breathe” opens with our youthful threesome rampaging through an affluent house pilfering whatever they find of value.  Meantime, the most desperate member of this group is Rocky who lives with her abusive mother and struggles to raise an adorable daughter who doesn’t have a clue about how unscrupulous her mother is.  Alex has a thing for Rocky, and Money struggles jealously to keep his accomplice and Rocky apart from each other.  Later, Money stumbles onto information from the guy that he fences stolen items to that an individual in a remote, virtually unpopulated, Detroit suburb keeps a cool million in cash squirreled away in his apartment.  Our unsavory protagonists conduct surveillance on the neighborhood in question and are surprised when they spot the so-called ‘The Blind Man’ (Stephen Lang of “Avatar”) out in the daylight exercising his pet Rottweiler.  When they determine that their victim is in fact sightless, they cannot wait to break into his residence.  Initially, they put the Blind Man’s pugnacious pooch to sleep in its dog house with a smoky concoction.  Nevertheless, gaining entrance to the house proves to be difficult.  Eventually, Rocky manages to climb in through a high window.  Once the three gain entrance, Money unleashes a crude form of knock-out gas on the slumbering Blind Man to prevent him from interfering with them during the burglary.

Unfortunately, despite all of his bravado, Money cannot muster the nerve to pull the trigger of his automatic pistol when the Blind Man catches them by surprise during a harrowing moment.  Alex and Rocky are just as shocked by the Blind Man’s startling appearance and struggle to hold their breath and stand rooted like statues while the Blind Man kills Money. Alex and Rocky manage to hide themselves, with Rocky taking refuge in a closet.  She is shocked when the Blind Man enters the closet where she is holed up, but watches in triumph as he opens a safe and inventories the contents.  As traumatized as she is by the sudden reversal of events, Rocky refuses to leave the house without the loot.  She memorizes the digital combination and later cleans out the safe.  Alex and she struggle to escape from the Blind Man’s house.  What might seem like a simple proposition turns out to be a nightmare.  The menacing but resourceful Blind Man knows every square inch of his house, and he has it rigged up so nobody can possibly escape.  Our protagonists had to go to extraordinary lengths just to effect an entrance, and they discover that getting themselves out is going to be virtually impossible.

Now, based on this plot synopsis, you’d think “Don’t Breathe” might degenerate into a predictable blood and gore potboiler, but you’d be entirely wrong.  Discretion prevents me from providing greater details about the plot.  Some of the complications will have you poised on the edge of your seat with your white-knuckled fists clenching the armrests of your chair.  Furthermore, by this time, you may not be as well-disposed about the welfare of the trespassers, since their selfish motives and apparent advantage over the Blind Man him make him appear more sympathetic.  Not only do things get more complicated, but the action also takes a truly bizarre turn that you couldn’t have foreseen.  Ultimately, the Blind Man turns the tables on his sighted adversaries, extinguishing all forms of illumination, so they wind up on equal footing with him.  Stephen Lang is dynamic as the Blind Man who never knows when to quit. Jane Levy looks suitably horrified by some of the predicaments in which she finds herself. You won’t forget the scene when the Rottweiler attacks her in Money’s car.  “Don’t Breathe” will leave you gasping.