As box office continues to be wounded by both hybrid release strategies and the Delta variant (The Suicide Squad is the latest casualty of both), luring audiences out to the multiplex has become a lofty task, with studios posing the difficult question of just what film is worth the money, hassle and potential risk. After 99 increasingly awful minutes, I can confidently, nay bullishly, tell you that this weekend’s schlock horror Don’t Breathe 2 is not worth any of the above. Save the cash, save yourself.
The shock success of the Sam Raimi-produced home invasion original meant that a second chapter would be inevitable regardless of its necessity (the final scene practically guaranteed one). So now, five years later, as the briskly efficient film about burglars meeting their match has well and truly evaporated from our minds and at a time when a sequel as pointless as this feels even more pointless than ever, here it lumbers into view, an unforgivably dull piece of product that should never have breathed in the first place.
The first film took a familiar premise and gave it a novel spin. What if the home being invaded (by three young and impoverished burglars) was owned by a blind man and what if that blind man was an ex-military killing machine who, in a divisively nasty twist, had a kidnapped girl in the basement who he had artificially inseminated? It lost some steam by the absurd, and sticky, finale but director Fede Alvarez (who had shown a flair for gory excess in his Evil Dead remake) squeezed more than enough tension from the setup to leave audiences thrilled and a $10m budget swelled to a $157m global gross. But the film’s sleeper success hasn’t haunted the culture since and a belated, schedule-filling follow-up feels like fan service for fans that no longer exist.
Gone is one of the first film’s aces – a plucky Jane Levy as a likable if morally dubious protagonist – and demoted is the other – Alvarez is now just co-writer and producer – and as such, there’s a certain off-brand cheapness to the film, not helped by its Serbian location unbelievably doubling up for Detroit. Back is Stephen Lang as Nordstrom, the crafty sightless killer, who is now living with an 11-year-old girl Phoenix (Madelyn Grace). He’s recreated the family that was ripped away from him when his daughter was killed in a car accident but has done so through nefarious means, albeit perhaps less nefarious than his original turkey baster plan in film one. But when a group of intruders force their way on to his property once again, he’s forced to defend her as well as confront the difficult secrets of his past.
Switching us from the side of the intruders to the side of those being intruded upon lumps Alvarez and co-writer-director Rodo Sayagues with a knotty dilemma. Having seen what Nordstrom is capable of, that he’s a murderer and a rapist, how can we be expected to care about what happens to him? It’s a question that’s partly answered by the introduction of his replacement daughter but there’s a no-stakes flatness to the scenes that don’t involve her as we watch odious thugs take on an odious rapist, a collection of #TeamNoOne showdowns. Let them all burn.
In the first film, those breaking in were of course unarguably reprehensible but they were also given a “right, but” backstory, struggling to survive in the economically depressed climate of Detroit, desperate for relief. Here they’re made as cartoonishly awful as possible (led by a snarling, silly Brendan Sexton III) and their ultimate plan for the girl so laughably repulsive that suddenly, problematically, Nordstrom is made to seem like the better option. The film’s “everyone is awful” emo worldview would perhaps be more forgivable, or at least tolerable, if the film was at least base-level competent. But it’s remarkably, tiresomely suspense-free and while Alvarez soaked the original in a pungently grim, hard-to-shake atmosphere, Sayagues struggles to make his film linger, like a shoddy 80s slasher sequel you forgot existed.
Lang is an effectively imposing physical presence but his character remains a problem the film isn’t able to fix. Is a rapist less evil if he is caring towards dogs? Is a kidnapper less evil if he takes care of who he’s kidnapped? Is a murderer less evil if he shows slight last act remorse? The answer to all is of course no but perhaps a smarter film would have been able to sift through such moral murk and come out the other side with an ending that’s less pat than this one. Don’t Breathe 2 is not only struggling for air but it’s struggling for purpose and meaning and hopefully this weekend, audiences too.
Don’t Breathe 2 is released in US and UK cinemas on 13 August
