Review: Don't Breathe 2 (2021)

Rodo Sayagues’ Don’t Breathe 2 is a surprisingly effective follow-up to the 2016 home invasion thriller that has only grown in my esteem over the past five years. The first film—directed by Fede Álvarez, who is co-writer with Sayagues here—had a great concept, with shocking twists, fluid camerawork, and smart blocking that all added up to an unbearably tense experience. Don’t Breathe 2 doesn’t quite manage the same breathless tension as the first film, but it is equally shocking and clever both in its visual construction and plotting. It’s about as nasty and satisfying a horror sequel as I’ve seen recently.

In the original film, three robbers break into the isolated home of a blind man, Norman Nordstrom (Stephen Lang), who turns out to be an ex-Navy SEAL and far more capable adversary than anticipated. There are twists and turns and we learn just what brutality Norman is capable of. In this sequel, Norman is the protagonist and raising his adopted daughter, Phoenix (Madelyn Grace), in a remote home in the desiccated suburbs of Detroit. A group of men arrive at the house one night for mysterious purposes and Norman has to tap into his dark past in order to save Phoenix.

To be more specific about the plot machinations of Don’t Breathe 2 would ruin much of the fun, so I’ll keep it vague. But much of the appeal of the first film, and now this one, is how the filmmakers shift your sympathies between the protagonist and antagonist. In the first film, you were ostensibly on the side of the robbers as they were the protagonists. However, as they invaded Norman’s home, you started to sympathize with him and his apparent vulnerability. As the film progressed, new information was revealed about Norman and the robbers, and the waters were muddied. Don’t Breathe 2 has much the same approach, but might be even more surprising in its twists.

The primary antagonist is Brendan Sexton III as Raylan, a skeevy gang leader who’s introduced leering at Phoenix in a public washroom and who follows Phoenix back to her home to raid it with his gang. From the opening moments, Raylan is pitched as a predatory villain with unclear, but undoubtedly sinister, motivations. In a transition scene, we hear a TV news report about the illegal organ trade in Detroit and so the later sight of a red cooler sitting in the back of Raylan’s pickup truck leads us to assume the worst. When Raylan and his crew invade Norman’s home in order to kidnap Phoenix, our fears are confirmed.

But things don’t play out exactly as we expect. We learn more about Raylan and Phoenix learns more about Norman and what her adopted father has done in the past. She’s torn between two men capable of profound evil, and likewise, the viewer is caught in the middle along with her, wondering which individual is the lesser of two evils.

There’s something perversely satisfying watching the narrative swing our sympathy between Norman and Raylan, with the wellbeing of Phoenix always at the forefront of our concerns and forcing us to switch sympathy throughout. It’s not entirely new for a horror film to make the villain of the first film the ostensible protagonist of the sequel—such a move goes all the way back to Bride of Frankenstein—but few films make the questionable morality of such a story choice a part of the story itself. Sayagues and Álvarez manipulate our discomfort over having Norman as the film’s protagonist in order to make us more susceptible to the film’s many twists and obscene moments of cruelty. It adds up to a film that’s surprisingly disarming.

Of course, this approach is most effective for viewers who have seen Don’t Breathe. Don’t Breathe 2 arguably works better for those viewers who haven’t seen the first film, as they will be caught off guard by the narrative twists and more impressed by the film’s strong visual style. The film relies heavily on steadicam and action scene blocking that emphasizes the physical dimensions and characteristics of Norman’s home. This approach is a carryover from the first film—it has a clarity and precision to movement that is lacking in most horror films and, thus, is most satisfying the first time you encounter it as a viewer.

However, the sequel offers a few refinements in its visual approach. For one, Don’t Breathe 2 relies more heavily on shadow than the first film. Because Don’t Breathe pit protagonists who can see against a blind antagonist, it didn’t bother to drape the villain in shadow or force him offscreen. Instead, it relied on a distinct colour palette to code the various parts of Norman’s home, which gave the film an interestingly colourful approach for a horror film. Don’t Breathe 2 is more conventional in its use of darkness and light, on screen space and off screen space, in order to produce tension in individual moments.

Of course, it’s still creative in its deployment of these conventional tools—there’s a mid film reveal of a certain character that uses shadow about as effectively as any ghost story. It also shares the same appetite for grisly escalation as the first film. Characters are dispatched in increasingly brutal ways throughout the film, as if the filmmakers want to put the viewer through the gauntlet of shock and discomfort. Early on, a character’s mouth and nose are glued shut with superglue, forcing him to cut open his mouth with broken glass in order to breathe, and we assume that’s the worst of what we’ll see. But later moments involving sedatives and machetes outdo the earlier gruesome kills.

I’ve come to expect a film by Fede Álvarez to have some moment that crosses the line of good taste in an ingeniously nasty way, and Don’t Breathe 2 certainly satisfies this expectation. Casual horror viewers will likely be appalled by certain scenes, but there’s a sadistic satisfaction to a film that can actually make a viewer genuinely uncomfortable without losing their attention or investment in the material on screen. Don’t Breathe 2 manages to do both of these things. It continues the effective narrative approach of the first film while continuing to shock and surprise with its inventive horror set pieces and grisly violence. It’s a down and dirty horror film in an era of horror cinema that has grown surprisingly squeamish and tasteful.

7 out of 10

Don’t Breathe 2 (2021, USA0

Directed by Rodo Sayagues; written by Fede Álvarez and Rodo Sayagues, based on characters created by Fede Álvarez and Rodo Sayagues; starring Stephen Lang, Brendan Sexton III, Madelyn Grace.

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