After making a big splash with his Evil Dead remake in 2013, director Fede Alvarez followed it up with the nerve-shredding suspense of Don’t Breathe. For many, Don’t Breathe is a modern masterpiece of horror and suspense and that’s what made the idea of a sequel kind of scary. It’s no secrets that horror sequels, more often than not, never live up to their predecessors—sometimes because they focus on style over substance. While most horror sequels amp up the gore and show off more of their killer threat, they don’t always make the best story choices story-wise and that’s unfortunately the case for Don’t Breathe 2.
Don’t Breathe 2 feels like one of those horror sequels that was forced to be made simply because the first one was so successful. We’ve seen it with Escape Room, A Quiet Place, The Purge, Sinister, Insidious, and plenty of other horror franchises basically since the genre debuted. If an original horror movie kills it at the box office, you can surely expect a sequel regardless of whether or not there should be. As for Don’t Breathe 2, it’s easy to see that Alvarez and returning co-writer Rodo Sayagues didn’t really have much to work with for a sequel given who they have as the protagonist.
Now, it’s clear that not getting the first film’s star, Jane Levy, back as Rocky definitely hurt this film, but it’s tough to blame her. It seems like there’s some bad blood between her and Alvarez based on recent comments made by both. Regardless, not having Levy back leads to Alvarez and Sayagues making a poor decision in putting the Blind Man (Stephen Lang) in the lead role.
It’s not unusual to have the killer take on a more leading role in a horror sequel since we’ve seen it plenty of times in slashers, but the Blind Man isn’t your typical slasher. There’s nothing goofy about him to make him fun and after what we find out about him in the first film, it’s hard not to view him as anything more than a monster. It doesn’t really matter if you have him take care of a young girl he refers to as his daughter, named Phoenix (Madelyn Grace), or fight to get her back from a group of men that comes to kidnap her. It’s kind of tough to forget the fact that we saw him literally bid and gag women he’d kidnap and then rape them with a turkey baster to impregnate them.
It’s even more frustrating that Don’t Breathe 2 barely ever wants to acknowledge this, as some of the characters view the Blind Man as misunderstood and that he just thinks of himself as a monster. This choice is definitely meant to create some dramatic irony based on what we know, but it feels frustrating in the moment and the idea of flipping your perspectives on these characters, including the kidnappers, is totally mishandled. Rather than create misunderstood representations that make these kidnappers more sympathetic in their purpose in abducting Phoenix, they’re made more evil in their true intentions.
The twist on these kidnappers probably would be twisted and disturbing in another film, but here, it totally ruins everything. It fails to keep the Blind Man as a villain and instead makes everyone out to be evil, so there are absolutely no stakes and no sides to really care about. There was actually a lot of potential for a really strong last act that could’ve seen the Blind Man continuing to act as a selfish, self-righteous monster as he decimates Phoenix’s captors, who have a stronger familial connection to her and maybe aren’t as bad as they appear. However, this doesn’t happen, and we get an ending that attempts to make the Blind Man into the sympathetic anti-hero he doesn’t deserve to be. Regardless how much Alvarez and Sayagues claimed that the Blind Man wasn’t going to be made into something “heroic,” all those fears the fans had from the first trailer were unfortunately justified.
The only good things that come from the Blind Man being the lead is the usual good stuff about horror sequels: more graphic, crazy kills. Don’t Breathe 2 definitely pushes the envelope for gorier kills and there’s a moment that lives up to the film’s name in a horrifying fashion. Also, for Sayagues taking over for Alvarez and making his directorial debut, his direction is pretty solid. There’s a long, one-take shot throughout the entire house as these kidnappers break in that’s super suspenseful and has some really great sound design that makes each footstep chill-inducing. Overall, Sayagues is able to make Don’t Breathe 2 a solidly suspenseful experience and it’s worth noting that Lang still delivers a really strong performance.
Sadly, the best choice that Alvarez and Sayagues make is SPOILER definitively ending the Blind Man’s story so that no more sequels can be made. The original Don’t Breathe is still a unique master class in suspense, but it’s unfortunate that, like most of the genre, it now has an unremarkable and mishandled sequel to go with it.
