Don't Breathe

Don't Breathe Information

Don't Breathe is a 2016 American horror film directed by Fede lvarez, and co-written by lvarez and Rodo Sayagues. The film stars Jane Levy, Dylan Minnette, Daniel Zovatto, and Stephen Lang, and focuses on three friends who get trapped inside a blind man's house while breaking into it.

The film was produced by Ghost House Pictures and Good Universe. The film premiered at South by Southwest on March 12, 2016, and was theatrically released on August 26, 2016, by Screen Gems and Stage 6 Films. It received largely positive critical reviews and grossed over $157 million.

Plot

Rocky, Alex, and Money are three Detroit delinquents who make a living by breaking into houses secured by Alex's father's security company and selling the stolen items. Rocky longs to move to California with her younger sister, Diddy, in order to escape from their abusive mother and her alcoholic boyfriend. However, the person buying the stolen goods from Money doesn't give them a fair price, not enough to fund Rocky's dream. Money then receives a tip that a US Army Special Forces veteran living in an abandoned Detroit neighborhood has $300,000 in cash in his house. He received it as a settlement after a wealthy young woman, Cindy Roberts, killed his daughter in a car accident. The three spy on the house and learn that the man is blind due to a blast during the Gulf War.

That night, the three approach the house and drug the Blind Man's dog. Finding all entrances locked, Rocky enters the house through a small window and lets the other two in. The group searches the house for the money but are unable to find it. Money puts a sleeping gas bottle in the Blind Man's bedroom. Assuming the money is behind a locked door downstairs, he shoots the lock. The noise wakes up the Blind Man, who overpowers Money and demands to know who else is with him. Money insists he is alone, and the Blind Man kills him with his own gun. Terrified, Rocky hides in a closet, where she witnesses the Blind Man open a hidden safe to check his money. After he leaves, she opens the safe and takes the money, which appears to be at least $1,000,000. However, the Blind Man finds Rocky's shoes and realizes that Money was not the only intruder.

Rocky and Alex evade the Blind Man and hurry to the basement. There, they are shocked to find a restrained woman in a home-made padded cell. Desperate, she shows them a newspapers article about the car accident. They realize that she is Cindy Roberts held captive by the Blind Man. They free her and run to the storm cellar door, only to be taken off guard by the Blind Man who mistakenly shoots and kills Cindy. He breaks down crying when he discovers she is dead, sobbing "my baby". Rocky and Alex rush back into the cellar while the Blind Man shuts off the lights, plunging them into darkness. After a blind struggle, Alex knocks out the Blind Man and they flee upstairs.

After blocking the basement door, they encounter the Blind Man's dog, who has woken. Unable to unlock the front door in time before the dog attacks them, they flee into the bedroom, where they are trapped by the barred windows. Rocky escapes the room through a ventilation duct, while the dog attacks Alex, who falls out of a window onto a skylight, going unconscious. When Alex awakens, the Blind Man shoots out the skylight and corners Alex in the utility room, appearing to kill him with a pair of garden shears. Meanwhile, the dog pursues Rocky through the vents, and she is captured by the Blind Man. She wakes up restrained in the basement like Cindy was. The Blind Man reveals that Cindy was conceiving his child to replace the one she killed. He then prepares to artificially inseminate Rocky, explaining that she will now give him a child. It is revealed that the Blind Man stabbed Money's corpse with the shears instead of Alex, who manages to save Rocky and handcuff the Blind Man.

Rocky and Alex are unable to call the police, as their blood is all over the house, so they try to leave through the front door. The Blind Man breaks free and shoots Alex dead. Rocky flees as the dog pursues her. She manages to trap the dog in her car trunk but gets captured again by the Blind Man. Inside his house, Rocky disorients him by setting off his house's alarm system, then hits him repeatedly in the head with a crowbar and pushes him into the basement. The gun fires into his side as he falls. Believing him dead, Rocky escapes before the police arrive.

With the money, Rocky prepares to leave Detroit with Diddy on a train to Los Angeles. Before boarding, she sees a news report, stating that the Blind Man was brutally attacked by two intruders (Alex and Money) in his house. He killed them both in self-defense and is now in stable condition at the hospital. However, the news report doesn't mention anything about Cindy, Rocky or the stolen money.

Cast

Jane Levy as Rocky
Stephen Lang as Norman Nordstrom/ "The Blind Man"
Dylan Minnette as Alex
Daniel Zovatto as Money
Franciska Tr?csik as Cindy Roberts
Emma Bercovici as Diddy
Christian Zagia as Raul
Katia Bokor as Ginger
Sergej Onopko as Trevor

Production

Fede lvarez noted that making the film was, in some ways, a reaction to his debut film Evil Dead (2013), specifically the criticisms that the film had too much blood, focused too much on shocking the audience, and was a remake. In response, Alvarez decided to make Don't Breathe, an original story that contained less blood and focused more on suspense over shocking audiences. He wanted to avoid making a film dealing with the supernatural, as he felt that was too trendy. Choosing to make the antagonist blind was a result of deliberately taking abilities away from him; Alvarez explained, "Sometimes you naturally give them powers and make them more menacing than a normal person, so we thought what if we do the other way around and take his eyes out and make him a blind person." Alvarez has called the movie "exercise in reversal" noting that the film deliberately subverts tropes such as the fact that the house in question is a "nice house on a scary street" as opposed to the opposite, or that the movie is a home invasion story told from the point of view of the invaders.

On May 1, 2015, Daniel Zovatto joined the cast. On May 22, 2015, Dylan Minnette was cast in the film, and on June 18, 2015, Jane Levy and Stephen Lang joined the cast. Principal photography began on June 29, 2015. Though the film is set in Detroit, it was primarily shot in Hungary; only a few views of Detroit were filmed there. Alvarez estimated that the film cost roughly half as much as Evil Dead, and welcomed the change, as it allowed for less studio interference.

Release

The film premiered at South by Southwest on March 12, 2016, and was theatrically released on August 26, 2016, by Screen Gems.

Box office

Don't Breathe grossed $89.2 million in North America and $67.9 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $157.1 million, against a production budget of $9.9 million. Due to its low production budget, the film became a sleeper hit and was considered a large financial success, with a net profit of $59.1 million, when factoring together all expenses and revenues. For Sony Pictures, it became their second late-summer surprise hit of 2016, following Sausage Party.

Don't Breathe was released in the United States and Canada on August 26, 2016, and was originally projected to gross $11-14 million from 3,051 theaters in its opening weekend, with some estimates going as high as $20 million, and many publications noting it could be the first film to dethrone Suicide Squad from the top of the box office. It made $1.9 million from Thursday night preview screenings, at 2,500 theaters, and $10 million on its opening day. It fell just 1.5% on Saturday, earning $9.8 million, which is uncommon as R-rated horror films tend to do well on their first day and drop sharply in revenue from their second day onward. Compared to other 2016 horror films, Lights Out had a drop of 22%, while The Conjuring 2 fell by 15%. In total, it grossed $26.4 million in its opening weekend, far above initial projections by 120% and easily displacing Suicide Squad to take the top spot at the box office. It was the biggest original horror debut of the year (besting 10 Cloverfield Lane), the biggest Screen Gems August opening ever (beating Takers) and the biggest debut for an R-rated original horror film since The Conjuring in 2013. Following its first-place finish, the film continued to dominate the box office for the second weekend, earning $15.8 million and an estimated $19.7 million for the four day Labor Day holiday, one of the best numbers ever for the long holiday weekend. As a result, it became only the second horror film to top the weekend box office two weekends in a row since 2014. The second weekend drop was only -40%, a remarkable feat considering the fact that horror films typically tumble at least 60% or more in their second weekend. The gradual drop was due to the holiday. It took only 11 days to surpass Alvarez's previous film, the Evil Dead reboot.

Although the film fell to third place in its third weekend as a result of being overtaken by Sully and When the Bough Breaks, it continued to witness strong holds by falling 49% after adding another 333 theaters.

Outside North America, the film's biggest debuts were in the U.K. ($1.3 million), Germany ($1.3 million), Brazil ($1.2 million) Mexico ($1.2 million) and Australia ($1 million). It scored the third biggest opening of the year for a Hollywood film in Korea with $4.5 million. It's on pace to become the highest-grossing horror film in Uruguay.

Reception

On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 87% based on 197 reviews, with an average rating of 7.1/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Don't Breathe smartly twists its sturdy premise to offer a satisfyingly tense, chilling addition to the home invasion genre that's all the more effective for its simplicity." Metacritic, which assigns a rating to reviews, gives the film a score of 71 out of 100, based on 39 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.

Dennis Harvey of Variety called Don't Breathe "a muscular exercise in brutal, relentless peril that should please genre fans." Jim Vejvoda of IGN awarded 8.8/10 and wrote, "Director Fede Alvarez delivers a lean, very mean thrill ride with Don't Breathe, tapping into several primal human fears and further establishing himself as one of the genre filmmakers to keep an eye on in the years ahead." Peter Travers of Rolling Stone gave the film 3 out 4 stars, writing: "This is some weird, twisted shit. Don't groan when I say Don't Breathe is a home-invasion thriller. Director Fede Alvarez is as good as it gets when it comes to playing with things that go bump in the night." Kyle Smith of the New York Post also gave the film 3 out of 4 stars, saying, "Apart from its thin characters and occasional trite moments, as well as a silly attempt to set up a sequel, Don't Breathe is just about perfect." Amy Nicholson of MTV wrote in a positive review, "Alvarez knows the size of his ambitions. He's written one great ghoul, surrounded him with targets, and simply let him let rip." The Verge called it "an impressive script-flip from the 1967 classic Wait Until Dark". Alvarez says he wrote the script before watching Wait Until Dark.

Awards

Award	Date of ceremony	Category	Recipient(s)
Critics Choice Awards	December 11, 2016	Best Sci-Fi/Horror Movie	Don't Breathe
Empire Awards	March 19, 2017	Best Horror	Don't Breathe
Fangoria Chainsaw Awards	October 2, 2017	Best Film	Don't Breathe
Fangoria Chainsaw Awards	October 2, 2017	Best Supporting Actor	Stephen Lang
Saturn Awards	June 28, 2017	Best Horror Film	Don't Breathe
St. Louis Gateway Film Critics Association	December 18, 2016	Best Horror/Science-Fiction Film	Don't Breathe

Sequel

In November 2016, writer/director Fede lvarez announced that a sequel was in the works. Producer Sam Raimi commented on the sequel and was quoted saying, "It's only the greatest idea for a sequel I've ever heard. I'm not kidding."