Don’t Breathe 2 review: a great action movie buried in a regular exploitation movie

Don’t breathe 2, The newly released follow-up to the 2016 horror thriller directed by Fede Álvarez, is like a sloppy Joe made from finely aged wagyu meat. It is nice? Yes, but it’s also gross and morally questionable. And more importantly, it’s hard not to imagine all the better things that rookie director Rodo Sayagues, who also co-wrote this movie and the original, could have done with such great ingredients.

First Do not breathe follows a group of teenagers who break into the home of blind veteran Norman Nordstrom (Stephen Lang) to steal his small fortune. They fail to realize that he is a former Navy Seal who is angry at the world for the tragic and accidental death of his daughter, and turns his attempted robbery into a cat and mouse nightmare scenario. Norman’s resentment towards intruders may be understandable, but he does reprehensible things in the film, making decisions that don’t allow for later redemption. His hideous actions prowl Don’t breathe 2 like an albatross for the first hour or so, as the new story continues to follow him.

In the sequel, Norman finds a young woman named Phoenix (Madelyn Grace) outside a burning house and takes her in as his daughter. He homeschooled her and teaches her survival skills, but after eight years, a mysterious group of people arrive at her home to kidnap Phoenix, preparing him to once again defend his home from intruders.

Like the first movie Don’t breathe 2 it’s scariest when all of his characters are trapped inside Norman’s house. Sayagues creates exceptional tension, comfortably taking advantage of long periods of silence and letting characters slip in and out of otherwise static shots.

In one particularly effective scene, Phoenix tries to escape the house just as the potential kidnappers arrive. Sayagues snakes the cameras through the narrow corridors, carefully dodging between Phoenix’s sneaky escape and the bewildered intruders trying to find her. It’s incredibly intense, before it breaks with relief from Norman’s first live action in the movie, though many more follow.

Do not breathe Play as a slasher, with the teenagers as the main characters and Norman as the ruthlessly efficient hunter. But the sequel is closer to an action movie, with Norman and his assailants trading blows in each confrontation. These action scenes are where Sayagues proves to be most capable. The scenes have unique lighting and staging, both in Norman’s house and outside of it, with slow, determined camera work that puts additional emphasis on the weight behind each punch and stab. Lang is also outstanding at portraying Norman’s physicality, putting all his weight behind every blow the character takes and delivers. Every fight in this movie seems like it hurts.

While the timing inside Norman’s house is great and feels like a clever echo of the first half of the first movie, the second half once again gets weird. The action shifts elsewhere and the tone shifts to a whole new genre, going from a chilling thriller to an exploitative movie. The new setting almost seems post-apocalyptic – it’s an abandoned building that the invading villains of the film have established as a base. He’s in ruins and crumbling around him, as if his various hideous actions (it turns out there are quite a few) were literally pulling the plaster of the building around him. It’s an eerie place for the Sayagues to explore, but it almost takes the movie too far into the mud.

From here, Don’t breathe 2 It gets grimy and rotten, and it becomes clear that the script departure from Norman’s horrible exploits in the original film is simply to make everyone else in the world even worse. Instead of making Norman more understanding, the movie just slides into moral disgust. With the context of the first movie in mind, it’s impossible to want someone to win here. In fact, the film even manages to go from the excessive seriousness of its first half to a pitch-black comedy for the second, simply causing each character to find new lows to sink into.

One thing that doesn’t change in the second half is Sayagues’ fantastic direction of action. The entire church feels uniquely designed to make the movie’s fights more exciting. Electrical rooms are bathed in blue light, with a thin layer of water covering the floor. It’s an OSHA nightmare, but it’s cool as hell, and the dangers give Norman a chance to fight his assailants without visual impairment. Another scene covers an abandoned swimming pool (why is there an indoor swimming pool here? What kind of building is this?) In the orange sunset light, filtered through a cloud of insecticidal gas, as two characters clash with knives and machetes.

Everything looks beautiful, but also like it’s from a completely different movie than any other that precedes it. The grindhouse-grime of the villains plot and exploitation-level gore, which would be at home in another version of this film, seems to diminish the action scenes of Sayagues’ signature house.

All of which does Don’t breathe 2 In a strange package that never quite fits. It’s too pretty for a midnight show, but too gross and spooky for when the sun comes up. It could have been a wonderful action-movie gourmet meal or a greasy, perky mess that cultured audiences love more than they should. Instead, it’s somewhere in between – a pretty good meal that doesn’t live up to its individual ingredients.

Don’t breathe 2 opens in theaters on August 13.