Don’t Breathe 2
I don’t know why it surprised me to have a couple of friends, when I mentioned that my wife and I were finally catching up with this sequel, say how repulsed they were by the 2016 original film. I get it, though- there’s a revelation about Stephen Lang’s Blind Man in that movie that turns the film into something completely different, and even if you still really like the movie, as we do, it’s appalling on a moral level. How the Hell can you follow that film up with the same character, and make him the main character of the film?
The film begins with a fire at a house in the run down part of Detroit, and a girl running out of it. Cut to eight years later, and that girl (Madelyn Grace) seems to be running from the Blind Man’s dog, but we come to see that it’s survival training he’s putting her through. Did we ever find out that the character’s name was Norman Nordstrom in the first one? Does it matter? What matters is that she has grown up thinking that she in Norman’s daughter, and even with that opening scene, if your mind goes to the worst case scenario that was set up in the first film, that would not be a surprise. For a variety of reasons, Norman has homeschooled the girl, named Phoenix, and doesn’t really allow her out in public. When she is allowed to go into town with Hernandez (Stephanie Arcila), some of Norman’s worst fears feel unexpectedly realized when a man corners her in the bathroom, only to follow her home. That night, they sneak into Norman’s house looking for her, unaware of what they are up against in the vet’s home.
Fede Alvarez’s original film works as a thriller because of how it shifts its perspective so effortlessly from one wanting to see Norman take care of the intruders in his home to showing just how much of a monster he really is. Norman is not a sympathetic character by the end of that film, and is revealed to be as deranged as any slasher movie killer ever. How on Earth can you make a sequel, then, that seems to act like we’re supposed to forget all of that and feel empathy for him because he’s raising Phoenix to be someone who can take care of herself, though? Well, it kind of doesn’t, because we come to see that Phoenix is as trapped and isolated in her life with Norman as that woman he had hostage in “Don’t Breathe,” but by the end, we’re supposed to feel a redemption arc for the character that is earned at absolutely no point in the film…except for when he doesn’t kill a dog in the movie. That’s the only redeeming thing he does throughout any of the two movies. In the first film, we feel like we’ve gotten a full portrait of a man who has gone through profound grief, and led to him doing horrible things as a way of finding peace. Here, it feels like he’s finally rewarded with that peace, and that’s an uncomfortable thing to think Alvarez and his co-writer, Rodo Sayagues (who directs this time out), felt he earned at any point.
There is no moral compass to this film. The one character who truly could offer one is offed quite early, and Phoenix- though capable and smart- is not allowed to be one because of the way she is treated as an object to be possessed not just by Norman, but by one of the intruders (Brendan Sexton III). There’s a tease of a doctor on the run for organ trafficking, and initially, our thoughts lead us to think that might be why the intruders of this film are doing what they’re doing. When it’s revealed why Brendan Sexton III’s Raylen is so fixated on Phoenix, we think “Ok, this is an interesting twist, and gives us something to move forward with in terms of personal drama,” but then we see where Raylen takes Phoenix, and the plans for her come into focus, and immediately feel grotesque again. The film builds to a climax between characters with no moral authority over the other, and we’re left feeling uncomfortable until Phoenix finally is allowed an opportunity to truly make her own choice. On a level of morality, I don’t know if I’ve felt this unsettled by a film since when I watched the original “I Spit on Your Grave” over a decade ago.
Sayagues has a similar visual palette he’s working with in this film as what Alvarez had in his film, but the cinematography feels more muddied and incomprehensible at times, which just adds to the sleaziness of this film. Lang is still a strong presence, and Grace has some very good moments, but the material doesn’t allow them anything interesting to play. In form and ideas, there’s not much difference between the two “Don’t Breathe” movies, but the execution of the stories, and the ideas at their centers, leaves one far below what came before in how it presents itself, and how we’re supposed to feel by the end. This is an unpleasant, ugly look at humanity with nothing to really redeem it. I guess they let one dog survive, though.
