The 2016 horror film Don’t Breathe concludes with Stephen Lang’s “Blind Man” character tying up the protagonist and attempting to sexually assault her in the hopes she’d give birth to a new child to replace his late daughter. It is an exceptionally dark and disgusting place for the movie to have gone, but it went there nonetheless, and there is no coming back from it. “The Blind Man” sexually attacks the main character after murdering all her friends, and she has to violently fight him off of her to escape with her life. He is the undisputed villain of that movie. He is a monster and his actions are inexcusable.
In Don’t Breathe 2, he is the hero of the story.
It is such a weird, unnecessary, uphill battle that the filmmakers have created for themselves by shaping the sequel around humanizing this antagonist. For one thing, it demonstrates a complete lack of understanding about what audiences enjoyed from the original movie. It’s an absolutely tone-deaf response to the story they created back in 2016. No one was asking for more “Blind Man”. The screenwriters seem to think this is their Logan, with “The Blind Man” now getting his own gritty redemption arc movie to humanize his character. Don’t Breathe 2 seems to be about how, if you really knew “The Blind Man”, you’d see his heart’s in the right place, which is truly the most unhinged sequel idea I think I’ve ever heard.
The problems don’t stop there. This movie is messy in a whole host of other exciting ways, too. The basic plot is that years after the original film’s ending, “The Blind Man” has now “adopted” a young orphaned girl named Phoenix, whom he’s raised as his long-dreamt-of replacement daughter. But when an evil group of (I kid you not) black market organ harvesters break into their house one night, it’s time for the two of them to put the years of traumatic survivalist training he’s put her through into practice, and fight off the attackers in many unnerving scenes. Add in the obvious ableism issue, with a seeing actor playing blind, and you’re left with very little to root for.
As I’m sure you have gathered, I am not a fan of this movie. While the original film crossed the line with its climax, it was actually a really impressive horror movie. It had a larger-than-life villain, along with inventive kills and situations. In contrast, Don’t Breathe 2 is not even a horror movie. It’s just violent. Director Fede Álvarez stepped down after the original film and passed control over to his friend Rodo Sayagues, who seems to think being dark and unpleasant is the same thing as being scary. Another red flag: the first film’s star, Jane Levy, didn’t return for the sequel due to her personal issues with Álvarez and company. This is not a fun movie to watch, and the impression from stories like Levy’s is that it probably wasn’t that much fun to make, either. So why make it? Why wait five years for a sequel with only one returning character? Who is this movie’s audience?
If anything here is worth saving, it’s the sound design. Similar to the first movie, there’s a great use of silence, allowing all the small audio details to shine. There is also one action piece where the characters fight in a room full of smoke, which stood out as the most creative of the many, many bloody fight scenes. The smokey atmosphere and red lighting allowed for a nice change of pace from the monotonous gore that fills the other 90 minutes. So that scene’s alright. Past that, this is a pretty miserable watch.
With no heart or humor, and an aggressively misguided conscience, Don’t Breathe 2 is an incredibly unpleasant ride. If you really want to see the bad guy from Avatar kill a bunch of dudes with a hammer, I guess you’ll get your money’s worth. Everyone else can do much better.
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