DON'T BREATHE 2: A Disastrous Questioning of Morality
SONYDon't Breathe 2, the long-anticipated follow-up to Fede Alvarez' sleeper 2016 hit Don't Breathe, finally arrives almost six years later and is now in the hands of director Rodo Sayagues as his directorial debut. To put it bluntly, Don't Breathe 2 is nothing short of a disaster. Its cinematic and thematic qualities are a far cry of what is expected and ultimately accepted within this medium; more on this note can be found in our CLAPPER review HERE. Nevertheless, what makes Sayagues Don't Breathe 2 even more painful and aggravating is that it has the chance to create something quite perplexing, thematically immersive and morally ambiguous for great effect with its villain, but not without massive problems.
Titled as Norman Nordstrom but never referred to as such throughout, Stephen Lang returns as the blind boogeyman, but this time in quite the twist to its predecessor. In Fede Alvarez' film, Lang plays the epitome of evil. A murderous rapist who, in an all-mighty twist of a simple home invasion gone wrong, is revealed to be housing a victim for both sexual gratification and the purpose of extending his bloodline. Furthermore, Lang's character is never caught for his heinous crimes and, in the time being, is left to presumably stalk the streets for his next victim. It is shocking, sickening and highly effective to further craft a disturbing and harrowing nightmare to this already frightening story. Now, take that depth and understanding of the story as this feature now finds Lang's character raising a child, named Phoenix, in solitary and an almost military regime hiding off the grid - teaching her the merits of stealth, weapons and survival. It is never made known to her what the need for preparation is, aside from the audience understanding it is to defend herself from people very much like her protector, albeit unbeknownst to her, as her captor. This is where Don't Breathe 2 reveals its nature as quite thematically complex and morally ambiguous. It seemingly puts forward the immersive yet undoubtedly unnerving notion that the audience is going to be propelled into emotionally siding with a villain, and a heinous one at that.
The feature seemingly wants to flirt with this motif. Throughout the whole first and second act, director Sayagues and co-writer Alvarez repeatedly and consciously propel the narrative in Lang's character being the overarching protector and defence for the intruders goal being to take Phoenix. This aspect of the writing crafts substance and emotional depth in implying that at this point, Lang's character is the protagonist. It is his house that is being invaded. It is his dog that is murdered. It is his family that is being torn apart. Again, knowing the substance of such a character, the audience should begin to feel slightly alienated and uncomfortable in this promotion of role reversal from antagonist to protagonist.
However, Sayagues film never battles or confronts this notion of this oxymoron relationship of the anti-hero. Even when it is there, face to face and as clear as day, Don't Breathe 2 misses its mark to create a moral dilemma for its audience to have to participate. To elicit an emotional response to that, they despise and detest on a moral level. At the halfway point, Don't Breathe 2 reveals two major plot points that change the dynamic of the feature. Firstly, Phoenix is indeed rescued from Lang characters' hands by what is revealed to be her father. This perpetuates the motif of the audience not rooting for Lang and consciously being told through the convention of storytelling of whom now portrays the antagonist and thus the protagonist, with the roles now being reversed. However, this is where the second plot point comes into play. In a matter of just minutes of settling the film’s heroes and villains, Don't Breathe 2, then inexplicably and wildly reveals a secondary twist upon that character definition by revealing Phoenix's parents to be the true villains of the piece! Leaders of a meth-dealing gang who, in order to survive, need Phoenix's heart transplanted for her mother, who is the only cook to produce said drugs.
Lang's character, without knowing said twist and on paper seems to be in desperate need to retrieve Phoenix again, sets off to 'rescue' her from those he knows to be legal guardians, but that is just it: Lang's character has no idea what these people are going to do with Phoenix, nor is such depth ever spoken on or off-screen. Therefore, it has to be inferred that Lang's character is going after her for his own needs of restoring his family through simple gratification. This is where Don't Breathe 2 becomes insanely problematic and hollow. In this decision with the features, character reveals, it does not have a lack of a heart - or better yet, guts - to propel this evil as the hero. This is further epitomised in the film’s closing climax, in which Lang's character rips and shreds his way through bodies after bodies to reach Phoenix and take her home. His character is propelled by his actions as the anti-hero, and the feature further pushes this motif to secure that status. Even going so far in his success to bring his character emotional release and an illustrious finale in the character fully accepting and acknowledging his sins.
Granted, this is a difficult and morally divisive attribute but crafts a significant layer of immersion in which the audience has to fight internally within themselves to root for evil. While it can deeply disturb and be uncomfortable, cinema builds these notions to craft discussion and debate. Granted, a feature such as Don't Breathe 2 may not perhaps set itself out to create these discussions consciously, such as the great heights of horror in the vein of Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs, Blade, Jigsaw in Saw, or Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver. Cinema is inundated with aspects of propelling these characters on film. Where Don't Breathe 2 becomes disastrous is that it false flags and proposes such and never follows through with it. Not only does it patronise its audience, but in a sense gaslights them into only temporarily projecting their conscious emotional state in siding with this deplorable character only to remove such immersion for a B-rate slasher incentive. The consequence of this half-baked ideology further showcases the problematic and tone-deaf nature of using this character as a simple plot point, while also bringing the genre, which has multiple issues of characters presented as such poor representation, into disrepute. Don't Breathe 2 sadly enters that category with a hollow and disastrous attempt at creating an internal audience dialogue.
Don't Breathe 2 never proposes this dark and harrowing approach to proceedings in a manner that has any more depth than a one-note line. There is a potential here to go further than the ordinary motif of a general horror feature. The film's predecessor perfectly encapsulates such by furthering and elevating the ordinary; it adversely gives Sayagues' feature no excuse but to craft a deeper and distinctively unique perspective on the ordinary. It is clear that structurally, cinematically, and within its genre, Don't Breathe 2 makes no attempt to provide a distinctive palette, resulting in a cancerous and disastrous attempt to question its audience's morality.
