Wait Until Dark with the roles reversed: we can imagine the pitch that got this movie by Fede Alvarez, the director of the 2013 Evil Dead reboot, into production.
Hair stands on end and blood flows in the darkened corridors of the home of the character known only as the blind man in Don’t Breathe. He lives on a street that screams “Foreclosure”. His neighbours have left, his house is the only one that has seen contact with a paint brush, and he has a nasty black dog. He is well equipped to protect himself from the outside world, and when it crashes in through a side window, he reaches for his battle axe.
The blind man (Stephen Lang) is hardly the helpless victim imagined by the trio of thieves, portrayed as believers in the greatest myth in Hollywood – the one last heist that will get them out of their Detroit hellhole. The robbers conduct a hurried recce in the hope that they will find the compensation money that the blind man was paid after a rich woman killed his daughter in an accident. Alex (Dylan Minnette) is sceptical but is won over by single mother Rocky (Jane Levy) and the aptly named Money (Daniel Zovatto). When they reach their target, they hardly expect an armed mark and more twists than in the average home invasion movie.
The robbers should have been warned by the boarded up windows and an early encounter with the fearsome canine, and once they enter the place, their survival instincts kick in only just in time for the first of many false endings. Alvarez throws elements from horror films into his stylish spine-chiller – heart-stopping scares, Grand Guignol intimations – and also draws from the woman in peril genre in tracing Rocky’s encounters with the blind man. The screenplay, by Alvarez and Rodo Sayagues, has a few glaring loopholes and the inevitable suggestion of a sequel. The blind man’s heightened sense of hearing conveniently gets switched on and off depending on the plot’s requirement, and the ability of all characters to tolerate physical harm is a contrivance to stretch the running time to 88 minutes.
But for the most part, Don’t Breathe lives up to its title. Pedro Luque’s fabulous camerawork evocatively captures the claustrophobia and unrelenting dread in the underlit house. Alvarez’s filmmaking skills kick in early and linger long after the movie has ended.
