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.
