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At Home, BluRay/DVD Reviews

DON’T BREATHE (SONY)

By • Nov 30th, 2016 •

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BluRay review by Roy Frumkes

As the ‘home invasion’ sub-genre goes, DON’T BREATHE is both familiar and transcendent. Certainly better directed and more effective than David Fincher’s PANIC ROOM. Three young burglars in desolate Detroit choose a house to invade, and are in for a night they will never forget…if in fact they manage to live through it.

On the passable commentary track the filmmakers admit that no one in the film is a ‘good’ person. When the female protag delivers the standard “Take this, you bitch!” line famously employed by Sigourney Weaver in ALIENS and countless times since, it rings completely false, and also proves to be a tad premature. That’s a distinguishing feature of this flick – the good guys aren’t good, and the villain, no matter how villainous he behaves, is more in the right than the three interlopers into his territory.

This was a good year for antagonists. Lang is terrific as the blind avenger (though he has little to contribute to the commentary track: for him, it’s clearly all up there on the screen). And we can’t forget the quietly menacing perf from Patrick Stewart earlier this year in THE GREEN ROOM.

Apparently given a better-than-decent budget, one can derive great pleasure from the camera moves, and the use of angles and space. It’s beautifully crafted, and that overlaps into the art direction.

Interestingly, the excruciating suspense of the robbers trying not to move or breathe as the house owner stands nearby with his acute hearing, conjured memories of a similar scene from Luis Bunuel’s LOS OLVIDADOS.

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