Welcome to JOE’s 31 Days Of Hallowe’en. For each and every day of October, we’ll be bringing you a horror movie to tuck into for the lead up to the big night. It could be new, old, an undiscovered gem, or a classic you’ll have seen a thousand times. No matter what it is, we guarantee you that it is brilliant, and it is SCARY.
For Day 24, we’re looking back over 2016’s home-invasion gone wrong, Don’t Breath.
Normally, when we see home-invasion thrillers, we’re on the side of the victims in the house as they try to survive. Don’t Breathe flips that on its head by placing us on the side of the invaders, and we start the movie with protagonists we don’t actually like.
Rocky (Jane Levy), her boyfriend Money (Daniel Zovatto) and her best friend Alex (Dylan Minnette) have run a little scam, busting into people’s home using the passcodes Alex swipes from his Dad’s security company. They eventually get word of a home in their neighbourhood that apparently has over $300,000 in it, enough to help them all start a proper new life.
The only thing standing between them and the money is the helpless old blind man living in the house (Stephen Lang).
However, once they break in, they soon discover that the old blind man is nowhere near as helpless as they’d been led to believe…
Clip via Sony Pictures Entertainment
Written and directed by Fede Alvarez, the guy who gave us the decent and incredibly violent Evil Dead remake (also starring Jane Levy), Don’t Breathe does a fantastic job of setting up the bad guys, and then quickly getting you on their side once you realise just how in over their heads they actually are.
The trio of hoodlums have a well-worn dynamic that is quickly blown apart by Lang’s relentless and vicious pursuit of them through his home-turf. Just because he’s blind doesn’t mean he’s at a disadvantage – he knows every inch of his home, and when it comes to it, he just plunges them all into darkness anyway, furthering his power over his unwelcome prey.
And, of course, in all movies like this, there is a lot more to it than meets the eye. Once the trio have broken into the house and notice the crazy levels of security inside, they suddenly cop to the fact that there is something truly horrific happening in there, and it might just be better to try to escape rather than fight their way out with the money.
But it is already WAY too late for that…
Check out our previous recommendations below:
Day 2 – The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Day 13 – Friday The 13th (1980)
Day 19 – The Blair Witch Project
LISTEN: You Must Be Jokin’ with Aideen McQueen – Faith healers, Coolock craic and Gigging as Gaeilge
