Movie Reaction: Don't Breathe 2

Formula: Don't Breathe / Hanna

 

When making a horror sequel, a few things need to be taken into consideration. The first is the nature of the horror. A Gerald's Game sequel doesn't make sense because it's not like there's new drama to find from another woman handcuffed to her bed after her husband dies having sex. The second consideration is who the audience wants to follow. Sequels almost always follow the villain for obvious reasons. It's much more likely that a crazed killer attacks a new set of teens than a final girl stumbles onto a second unrelated killer. Some franchises are naturals for sequels. Any slasher. Or Escape Room is an obvious recent one. I'm still bummed that Oculus never became a franchise. Others are harder to sequelize. If a story can only be done the same exact way, that isn't narratively interesting.

 

Don't Breathe is a tricky franchise. The horror conceit is VERY specific. That first movie works hard to set up a scenario where the blind Nordstrom has the advantage. It has to be night. He has to have intruders in his house. He needs to be able to trap people in his house. And there needs to be a reason why the intruders would be hesitant to leave in the first place. The house has to be a good mix of dilapidated and unassuming while also big enough for a lot of nooks and crannies. The difficulty of creating a similar scenario is too much for me to expect a sequel. Had you asked me to write a sequel, I would've expected it would be a rematch between Nordstrom and Jane Levy's Rocky. She knows his secrets and has his money. He traps her in another scenario where the darkness is to his advantage. I'm not sure I'd care for that movie, but it recognizes that Rocky is the character I connected with in the first movie and that Nordstrom is a force, not a person.

 

Instead, Don't Breathe 2 makes an unexpected turn. Stephen Lang's Nordstrom is the hero...kind of. Shortly after the events of the first movie, he finds a little girl whose house burned down and adopts her - let's say - unofficially. Eight years later, she's an 11-year-old named Phoenix (Madelyn Grace). Nordstrom homeschools her and gives her survival training, afraid of something bad ever happening to hew. To be clear, this is the replacement daughter he's looking for in the first movie. There's nothing inappropriate about it other than how he got her. Anyway, one night, some men invade the house. It's not exactly clear why. There are some stories on the TV about a gang who has been harvesting organs. So, this movie turns the tables and it's about Nordstrom protecting himself and Phoenix from these men. As with the first movie, the complications level up as well.

 

This movie is decidedly more thriller than horror. The first movie was about the darkness and the silence. Since Nordstrom is the protagonist this time, this movie is more about how he can be a badass despite his blindness. There aren't many scares or jumps in the movie. They demystified the bogeyman. Lang is still good in the role. Madelyn Grace humanizes him a lot, and they make his opposition so bad that Nordstrom looks sympathetic by comparison. And they use dogs a lot too. This is a big dog sympathy movie*.

 

*A term I just made up for when a movie uses a dog or the treatment of a dog to reveal someone's character. If a dog likes someone, he must be good. If someone mistreats a dog, he must be evil.

 

However, I felt like the movie was gaslighting me. In the last movie, Nordstrom kidnapped a woman and impregnated her, presumably with a turkey baster, to replace his dead daughter. Then he brutally kills several people - sure, they were trying to rob him - to keep that hidden. He's a BAD GUY. The switcheroo of making him the "hero" is fun as a writing exercise and all, but it's incongruent with the first movie. It's not like I'd go back to the first movie now with a new perspective on his situation. He's a monster, not the hero of the franchise. Just putting bigger monsters against him doesn't mean I'm ready to root for him.

 

I give Don't Breathe 2 credit for choosing an unexpected way to make a sequel to such a specific movie. If all I'm looking out for is some creative violence and ideas for making blindness a way to be a badass, then this movie is plenty. All the ways that it complicates the narrative though fell completely flat. I mean, there were some teen girls in the same row as me and the movie didn't get them to jump even once, so what are we doing here?

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend