‘Don’t Breathe 2’ Sucks the Air out of Its Story With Familiar Gore

Alci Rengifo

Not every movie requires a sequel. Some ideas are just fine left as a one-time event. “Don’t Breathe 2” serves no other purpose than to bank on the success of its predecessor by turning up the easy shocks and gore. The original 2016 “Don’t Breathe” by Fede Alvarez, was a fast-paced guilty pleasure that only needed three people to keep the audience engaged. You had two unwise burglars (played by Jane Levy and Dylan Minnette) who break into the home of a blind former Navy Seal, Norman Nordstrom (Stephen Lang). He may be blind, but Nordstrom’s heightened senses and raging pet dog made him a formidable adversary. He was also psychotic, with a secret chamber where he nearly inseminated Levy, so she could give birth to a baby in order to replace his dead daughter. How do you top that?

The answer writer-director Rodo Sayagues gives is that you make the premise even more preposterous. What began as an easy thriller about three people battling it out inside a house becomes an extended, bleak slice of madness. Sayagues, who wrote the first movie, opens the sequel similarly with an overhead shot of an isolated neighborhood. This time a young girl walks down a street alone, a house in flames nearby. Eight years later and that girl is now 11-year-old Phoenix (Madelyn Grace), who is being raised by Nordstrom to be a survivalist. She’s not allowed to go to school or make any friends. The world is just too dangerous. That danger arrives at the doorstep however, in a pack of armed intruders led by Raylan (Brendan Sexton III), who form part of some child organ-trafficking ring. A fresh standoff ensues inside Nordstrom’s home involving the blind veteran going into full kill mode.

The original “Don’t Breathe” was one of several recent horror-thrillers driven by some kind of situational idea. Nordstrom being blind was a good excuse to stage intense scenes in rooms where the lights go out, or moments where one small move or noise could alert him to your presence. Later on the technique would be done better in “A Quiet Place,” where humans can’t make any noise or the blind aliens will eat them. Stephen Lang also brought Nordstrom to life with palpable menace and a scratchy voice that’s nearly a whisper. Rugged, in a tank-top with white hair, he was like the grandpa from hell. He also seemed vulnerable, even nervous. “Don’t Breathe 2” struggles with finding an excuse to keep him going. No references are made to the first movie, so it’s as if his kidnapping and inseminating spree has been forgotten. After the cops raided his home at the end of that film, you would think he would serve some time, apparently not. Sayagues’s new chapter could stand on its own. It also lacks the more atmospheric pacing of Alvarez’s approach, which was about Nordstrom’s blindness and how it complicated the situation. The editing was so taught you could forgive yourself for asking simple questions like, “why not just knock out his legs and run away?”

“Don’t Breathe 2” inspires a whole plethora of questions like, why didn’t Nordstrom go to jail after the first movie? Why are organ-hunters a combo of deadbeat mercenaries, dimwits and thugs from other movies? No one serves any purpose than to meet a gruesome end. Duke (Rocci Williams), is the buffed team member who gets incinerated by well-placed fuel tanks in the basement, Jared (Bobby Schofield) gets his lips fused with super glue before he rips them open with a knife, Jim Bob (Adam Young) will take several beatings and bullets and Raul (Christian Zagia) is the trafficker with a hidden heart of gold, who feels moral qualms when it comes to hurting kids. They all meet the wrath of Nordstrom, who becomes a one-man army in this sequel, capable of aiming a gun with keen precision because someone stepped into a puddle a certain way. He can take a slice to the abdomen and still keep going.  Since he’s a movie Navy Seal, Nordstrom has also mastered the use of super glue to close a deep gash on his arm. The man must have Michael Myers DNA.  Or as one of the movie’s many laughable lines informs us, “he will kill you all.” 

Oddly enough, Sayagues seems to believe that in a sequel you need to literally repeat certain shots or gimmicks from the first film frame by frame. The villains have a ferocious dog with apparent super speed and a rage as if he hasn’t been fed for days, just like Nordstrom’s dog who tortured the burglars of the first movie. At one point Nordstrom falls atop a glass ceiling that begins to slowly crack, as happened to Dylan Minnette in the original. The better suspense moments work independently from the plot. One involves Phoenix getting trapped in a crate that begins to fill with water, while one of the goons threatens to drop a live wire inside. But most of the action consists of someone’s face getting punched into a pulp or demolished with something very heavy. There’s little real energy or style to the violence in this movie. Sayagues makes the classic slip of mistaking close-ups of fake blood as intense or scary. Stephanie Arcila appears early on as Hernandez, a local who wants to help Phoenix get out more. She gets bludgeoned mercilessly by Jim Bob for no reason than to provoke a few jumps in the audience.  The photography is efficient, with at least one scene where Nordstrom lays in a puddle of water, waiting for vibrations from footsteps, looking like a glossy clip for someone’s reel.

The plot then truly goes off the rails when it leaves the house. After a “shocking” revelation about Phoenix, particularly involving a white strand of her hair, we get to meet Raylan’s significant other and fellow meth junkie, who needs an organ transplant. You can guess where this is going. Admittedly “Don’t Breathe 2” doesn’t slow down and figures that if you’re going to go insane, best to go all the way. Limbs will get amputated via machete and if you decide to battle the superman blind man, he may just take out your own eyes himself. For such a bloody romp “Don’t Breathe 2” eventually falls flat because it can be such a downer of a movie. Yes, horror is meant to be dark and unnerving, but not necessarily depressing to watch. There should be some life to the writing and cinematic technique. By the time the final hatchet falls in this movie, you just don’t care because the premise is out of oxygen.

“Don’t Breathe 2” releases Aug. 13 in theaters nationwide.