Editorials
[Event Report] Fede Alvarez’s Trailer Launch Event for ‘Don’t Breathe’
On a bright and sunny Thursday morning, in the heart of downtown Los Angeles, this reporter was fortunate enough to watch the first official trailer for the upcoming thriller Don’t Breathe, check out the Escape Game Experience, and catch up with writer/director Fede Alvarez to discuss his new movie, all on behalf of Bloody Disgusting.
In the film, a desperate woman in serious need of money joins forces with her lover and her friend to break into the home of an unsuspecting senior citizen, and steal the supposed lump of cash he’s sitting on. Although the plan seems foolproof, once the trio enters the house, they find that they have seriously underestimated their opponent, and soon realize that getting the stash and getting out might not be so easy after all.
Read on to discover what was learned about the upcoming film, which is set to release sin theaters on August 26th, 2016.
The Trailer
In the trailer, a struggling single mother named Rocky (Jane Levy) teams up with her degenerate boyfriend who goes by the name of “Money” (Daniel Zovatto) and friend Alex (Dylan Minnette) to rob an old man blind, and finally seize the financial security she needs to take her young daughter away from their impoverished lives, once and for all. After casing the house, her boyfriend reports back and assures her that the old man has over three hundred thousand dollars hidden somewhere within those walls, and that it’ll be easy to swipe because the owner is actually blind. It seems like a simple grab and go, but once they enter the premises, the tables are turned, and the gang comes to the horrifying conclusion that they may never leave this place again. It turns out that despite being blind, the old man is actually quite capable of defending himself, as he becomes the predator, and the kids looking for some quick cash quickly devolve into the prey. Thus begins a game of utterly intense cat-and-mouse, as the man tries to find the intruders in his home that he can’t see, and the robbers try to hold their breath and keep quiet so as not to alert the man tracking them with heightened senses.
The Interview
With his follow-up to the widely beloved 2013 Evil Dead remake, Fede Alvarez is stepping back into the director’s chair with a lot of expectations being held over his head. Will his new film be just as frightening as his last? Yes, probably. Will it be as gory? Probably not. As Alvarez explains in his own words, there are many elements the two films have in common, but “Gore is not one of them”. It was very important to Alvarez to continue to stay true to his slick style, while simultaneously breaking away from the world of remakes and reboots. “Evil Dead was all about, let’s make a modern gore fest” Alvarez explains. “People said, ‘I love the movie but I didn’t like the fact that it wasn’t original’, so [this time] I was like no remake, let’s do our own thing, right from the first page”.
Even though Don’t Breathe won’t necessarily be as over-the-top bloody as Evil Dead was, don’t think for a second that it won’t be just as terrifying. “We said let’s try to make a great thriller where you don’t depend on the gore, which doesn’t mean it’s rated PG-13 by no means. It’s still not rated. Hopefully it will be rated R. But uh, it gets pretty fucked up and that’s what I think Evil Dead had”.
Aside from creating the project himself, Alvarez’s new film will also showcase its own unique identity through a very distinctive character: a sinister blind man. “It definitely has something that I personally never saw before and I thought it was great for a movie which is having a villain who is blind” Alvarez muses. “Usually, blind people in movies are, you know, heroes or mentors or very mystical and nice people, and never the bad guy in a way, right? So we thought it was very interesting”. Alvarez then added, “I don’t want to spoil too much of the movie for you guys, but you will realize when you take the eyes away from the hunter it becomes very very interesting and it gives opportunity to things that you never would have thought before would ever happen”.
The Escape Room
While the escape room was specially tailored to mimic the plot of Don’t Breathe, we were told moments wouldn’t be exactly as they are in the movie. Complete with three trained actors to play Rocky, Money, and the blind old man, the Countdown Live Escape Games LA adjusted their usual scenarios to match Fede Alvarez’s vision, so instead of finding the missing kids that Krampus stole, or escaping a resort before an active volcano explodes, our group was told to break into an old man’s house, steal the cash out of his safe, and escape before he catches us. First, we slipped a hand through the doggy door and fed the old man’s pooch a bag of pills to put him to sleep (no dog was actually harmed, it was just a recording of a dog barking and then going silent).
Next, our group entered the escape room and began looking for clues. The room itself looked like a creepy, rundown living area that hadn’t been maintained in years – in other words, Norman Bates would probably call it home sweet home. Soon, we found strange black dominoes hidden everywhere, in the couch cushions, in the draws, underneath scattered dolls, and in tiny jewelry boxes. On one side of the dominoes, there was only brail, but on the other side, there were random numbers and letters. Once we located the safe, we saw a small white plaque on the door, and realized we would have to figure out the code for the safe based on the dominoes we found. We matched the order of the brail to each specific domino, and deciphered the combination. Once we typed it in, the safe popped open, and we filled our backpack with dozens of rolls of hard cash. However, just when it seemed that things were going our way, the old man stormed into the room, demanding to know who was there. We all backed up against the wall that was closest to us, as the man stomped around the room with his arms outstretched, reaching for us. During this time, the actress playing Rocky found a hidden passageway through a dresser that led to a smaller secret room. This little room was only big enough to hold items too old and useless to be anything but storage, but that’s not all. There was also a dirty twin bed in the corner of the room complete with a heavy chain attached, which we could only assume was used to keep prisoners locked up. We all quietly piled through the dresser into this little room that was even creepier than the last, but just when we thought we were safe from the old man’s grasp, we heard him on the other side of the door, locking us in.
In the second, smaller room, we once again began looking for clues, but our search party was called off within seconds when we heard the old man yell “Now you see what I see!” and shut off all of the power. Standing in pitch black darkness, we pulled our phones out one by one to use as flashlights, and began looking around again. We started to find puzzle pieces hidden in random sectors of the room, and put them all together on a table. After solving the puzzle, we discovered that we could pull a rope that would let down a lock and a set of keys, one of which would wind up unlocking the door to get out. Once we put the key in the lock, we piled back out into the living room area, but just when we tried to sneak out the back door, the old man burst through, looking for us. After briefly panicking, we managed to find the correct key to unlock the front door, and got out just in time. Rocky, however, wasn’t so lucky. Just as we began to laugh about our close call, the old man rushed out of the front door, grabbed Rocky, lifted her up in the air, and dragged her back inside. It was the closest to a real life Texas Chain Saw Massacre moment this reporter has ever experienced. To say it was pulse pounding would be a vast understatement.
What We Learned
Overall, the experience was extremely pleasant, and informative. We learned that the blind character in this film is more of a sinner than a saint, that the film will most likely be rated R, and that Fede Alvarez is stepping away from the remake that he’s become so wildly famous for, in favor of creating something more original. Evil Dead was a serious triumph, especially when you consider what many horror movie re-imaginings have looked like, but it’s really exciting to know that we’re finally going to get a better glimpse at Alvarez’s skills as a filmmaker with this entry, because he finally, truly gets to do his own thing. Don’t Breathe may not be as gory as Evil Dead, but it will undoubtedly be just as disturbing. Make sure to catch it when it comes to a theater near you in August later on this year.
Twice a month Joe Lipsett will dissect a new Amityville Horror film to explore how the “franchise” has evolved in increasingly ludicrous directions. This is “The Amityville IP.”
A bizarre recurring issue with the Amityville “franchise” is that the films tend to be needlessly complicated. Back in the day, the first sequels moved away from the original film’s religious-themed haunted house storyline in favor of streamlined, easily digestible concepts such as “haunted lamp” or “haunted mirror.”
As the budgets plummeted and indie filmmakers capitalized on the brand’s notoriety, it seems the wrong lessons were learned. Runtimes have ballooned past the 90-minute mark and the narratives are often saggy and unfocused.
Both issues are clearly on display in Amityville Karen (2022), a film that starts off rough, but promising, and ends with a confused whimper.
The promise is embodied by the tinge of self-awareness in Julie Anne Prescott (The Amityville Harvest)’s screenplay, namely the nods to John Waters’ classic 1994 satire, Serial Mom. In that film, Beverly Sutphin (an iconic Kathleen Turner) is a bored, white suburban woman who punished individuals who didn’t adhere to her rigid definition of social norms. What is “Karen” but a contemporary equivalent?
In director/actor Shawn C. Phillips’ film, Karen (Lauren Francesca) is perpetually outraged. In her introductory scenes, she makes derogatory comments about immigrants, calls a female neighbor a whore, and nearly runs over a family blocking her driveway. She’s a broad, albeit familiar persona; in many ways, she’s less of a character than a caricature (the living embodiment of the name/meme).
These early scenes also establish a fairly straightforward plot. Karen is a code enforcement officer with plans to shut down a local winery she has deemed disgusting. They’re preparing for a big wine tasting event, which Karen plans to ruin, but when she steals a bottle of cursed Amityville wine, it activates her murderous rage and goes on a killing spree.
Simple enough, right?
Unfortunately, Amityville Karen spins out of control almost immediately. At nearly every opportunity, Prescott’s screenplay eschews narrative cohesion and simplicity in favour of overly complicated developments and extraneous characters.
Take, for example, the wine tasting event. The film spends an entire day at the winery: first during the day as a band plays, then at a beer tasting (???) that night. Neither of these events are the much touted wine-tasting, however; that is actually a private party happening later at server Troy (James Duval)’s house.
Weirdly though, following Troy’s death, the party’s location is inexplicably moved to Karen’s house for the climax of the film, but the whole event plays like an afterthought and features a litany of characters we have never met before.
This is a recurring issue throughout Amityville Karen, which frequently introduces random characters for a scene or two. Karen is typically absent from these scenes, which makes them feel superfluous and unimportant. When the actress is on screen, the film has an anchor and a narrative drive. The scenes without her, on the other hand, feel bloated and directionless (blame editor Will Collazo Jr., who allows these moments to play out interminably).
Compounding the issue is that the majority of the actors are non-professionals and these scenes play like poorly performed improv. The result is long, dull stretches that features bad actors talking over each other, repeating the same dialogue, and generally doing nothing to advance the narrative or develop the characters.
While Karen is one-note and histrionic throughout the film, at least there’s a game willingness to Francesca’s performance. It feels appropriately campy, though as the film progresses, it becomes less and less clear if Amityville Karen is actually in on the joke.
Like Amityville Cop before it, there are legit moments of self-awareness (the Serial Mom references), but it’s never certain how much of this is intentional. Take, for example, Karen’s glaringly obvious wig: it unconvincingly fails to conceal Francesca’s dark hair in the back, but is that on purpose or is it a technical error?
Ultimately there’s very little to recommend about Amityville Karen. Despite the game performance by its lead and the gentle homages to Serial Mom’s prank call and white shoes after Labor Day jokes, the never-ending improv scenes by non-professional actors, the bloated screenplay, and the jittery direction by Phillips doom the production.
Clocking in at an insufferable 100 minutes, Amityville Karen ranks among the worst of the “franchise,” coming in just above Phillips’ other entry, Amityville Hex.
The Amityville IP Awards go to…
- Favorite Subplot: In the afternoon event, there’s a self-proclaimed “hot boy summer” band consisting of burly, bare-chested men who play instruments that don’t make sound (for real, there’s no audio of their music). There’s also a scheming manager who is skimming money off the top, but that’s not as funny.
- Least Favorite Subplot: For reasons that don’t make any sense, the winery is also hosting a beer tasting which means there are multiple scenes of bartender Alex (Phillips) hoping to bring in women, mistakenly conflating a pint of beer with a “flight,” and goading never before seen characters to chug. One of them describes the beer as such: “It looks like a vampire menstruating in a cup” (it’s a gold-colored IPA for the record, so…no).
- Amityville Connection: The rationale for Karen’s killing spree is attributed to Amityville wine, whose crop was planted on cursed land. This is explained by vino groupie Annie (Jennifer Nangle) to band groupie Bianca (Lilith Stabs). It’s a lot of nonsense, but it is kind of fun when Annie claims to “taste the damnation in every sip.”
- Neverending Story: The film ends with an exhaustive FIVE MINUTE montage of Phillips’ friends posing as reporters in front of terrible green screen discussing the “killer Karen” story. My kingdom for Amityville’s regular reporter Peter Sommers (John R. Walker) to return!
- Best Line 1: Winery owner Dallas (Derek K. Long), describing Karen: “She’s like a walking constipation with a hemorrhoid”
- Best Line 2: Karen, when a half-naked, bleeding woman emerges from her closet: “Is this a dream? This dream is offensive! Stop being naked!”
- Best Line 3: Troy, upset that Karen may cancel the wine tasting at his house: “I sanded that deck for days. You don’t just sand a deck for days and then let someone shit on it!”
- Worst Death: Karen kills a Pool Boy (Dustin Clingan) after pushing his head under water for literally 1 second, then screeches “This is for putting leaves on my plants!”
- Least Clear Death(s): The bodies of a phone salesman and a barista are seen in Karen’s closet and bathroom, though how she killed them are completely unclear
- Best Death: Troy is stabbed in the back of the neck with a bottle opener, which Karen proceeds to crank
- Wannabe Lynch: After drinking the wine, Karen is confronted in her home by Barnaby (Carl Solomon) who makes her sign a crude, hand drawn blood contract and informs her that her belly is “pregnant from the juices of his grapes.” Phillips films Barnaby like a cross between the unhoused man in Mulholland Drive and the Mystery Man in Lost Highway. It’s interesting, even if the character makes absolutely no sense.
- Single Image Summary: At one point, a random man emerges from the shower in a towel and excitedly poops himself. This sequence perfectly encapsulates the experience of watching Amityville Karen.
- Pray for Joe: Many of these folks will be back in Amityville Shark House and Amityville Webcam, so we’re not out of the woods yet…
Next time: let’s hope Christmas comes early with 2022’s Amityville Christmas Vacation. It was the winner of Fangoria’s Best Amityville award, after all!
4 New Horror Movies Releasing This Week Including ‘Late Night with the Devil’ at Home
Looking for New Episodes of “Chucky” on Peacock? Here’s What Changed
‘Ready or Not’: Radio Silence Filmmakers Tease the “Absolute Banger” of a Sequel That’s Taking Shape
‘Terrifier 3’: Filming Has Wrapped on Damien Leone’s Christmas Slasher Sequel!
‘Halloween: Illustrated’ Review: Original Novelization of John Carpenter’s Classic Gets an Upgrade
You must be logged in to post a comment.