“Don’t Breathe” full of scares and tension

“Don’t Breathe” is not just a warning to the film’s protagonists, it’s the likely reaction you will have to Fede Alvarez’s newest horror film. Mixing in well-directed tension filled scenes, great acting, nuanced characters, and an intriguing analogy for the current economic crisis.

Rocky (Jane Levy) is a career criminal who is saving money from her robberies to escape her dysfunctional family and move to California. She and her two partners Alex (Dylan Minnette) and Money (Daniel Zovatto) decide their final heist will be in a desolate neighborhood with only one resident. An old blind war veteran (Stephen Lang) who is sitting on $300,000. To the horror of the thieves they discover that the heist may be harder than it seems.

Jane Levy is a capable actress and her breakout role that will be sure to get her movie deals will likely be “Don’t Breathe” she turns a usually unlikeable character into a strong and intriguing main protagonist. Both set in a desperate struggle for money that pushes her to thievery while still retaining her humanity by doing it for her younger sister who she is trying to save from turning into her. Dylan Minnette and Daniel Zovatto are adequate, they give commanding portrayals of their roles but they aren’t really the stars of the story. The real shining light is Stephen Lang whose villain is a truly terrifying presence, but ultimately justified in his actions. At least justified until his true intentions are revealed in a gruesome, and convoluted, twist. In an odd way Lang’s character is simply protecting is house and his actions are that of a man who has become severely mistreated by the society he has been thrown into. A man who has dealt with enough tragedy that he will go to diabolical and disgusting efforts to get his revenge. While he is certainly not a sympathetic character, these breadcrumbs make for a competently constructed villain.

What works best about “Don’t Breathe” is that it denies its genre conventions. The film falls into the category of home invasion horror films, but it does a lot more with that premise. Usually the protagonists of home invasion movies are the ones living in the home, but this film casts the invaders as the heroes and traps them in the home of a violent and skilled murderer. It also gives a weakness to the villain. In most horror films the main characters are given a huge disadvantage in the fight for their lives. Instead, “Don’t Breathe” gives its villain the disadvantage, blindness. This makes for incredibly inventive and entertaining sequences of intense and frightening scenes.

“Don’t Breathe” also has a surprisingly deep metaphor about economic inequality in our current climate. Both the main protagonists and villains are put in dire situations that have a deep impact on the way they perceive life. The blind man has a deep resentment for life, this mainly comes from one main tragedy in his life that involves economic elite. Our protagonists also default to theft to get any money, and to them $300,000 is the greatest amount of cash they could ever hope to receive. It’s a well-crafted analogy that only further fleshes out as we learn about our characters and what drives their acts.

All of these working pieces make “Don’t Breathe” an easy addition to the horror-film renaissance and a fun night at the movies. “Don’t Breathe” should actually be titled “Don’t Skip.”