We explore why the cinematography and camerawork is the most crucial factor when it comes to home invasion films

Home invasion horror films have become a growing trend in the genre, with the recent success of Fede Alvarez’s excellent Don’t Breathe being just the latest example. What Alvarez’s stripped down, claustrophobic film expertly illustrates is that if you want to make a good home invasion film, you really have to make the most out of your camera. This is a genre that is all about people being trapped somewhere, so to give the camera unlimited agency and make it the only entity that’s truly allowed to escape and move as it pleases is a crucial aspect of these pictures. Taking advantage of this seems to so often lead to the home invasion films that have come to be considered “classics,” while neglecting this principle sees forgettable, unsuccessful movies being made. While putting particular focus on Alvarez’s Don’t Breathe, the camerawork of many films from this genre will be examined in order to prove why cinematography is the most important aspect of home invasion horror.

Don’t Breathe has been the most recent endeavor in home invasion horror, with the film offering up plenty of fresh ideas and innovations to the closed-in storytelling. The main conceit in the film is that the owner of the home that is being invaded is blind, with several tactics in the film making the most of that handicap.

Shifting to night vision and scenes that are blurred are stylistic touches that work to great effect. While Rocky (Jane Levy) and the rest of her team struggle to figure out the layout of their new surroundings, the camera spins around at an unrestrained pace, zooming in and out on certain artifacts that are littered throughout the house. Every single detail that the camera focuses in on, whether it’s a hammer from a toolset, an errant shard of glass on the floor, or a simple skylight, they all become integral pieces to the puzzle of this film. The camera is slyly winking at you with every pan around the corner, spoiling-yet-not big set pieces from the film. The camera is as tuned into this building as its blind owner is. The film even starts with an extreme overhead, bird’s eyes view shot of everything that’s crucial to this film. We may not know it at the time, but once again, the camera does.

Mike Flanagan’s film, Hush, almost operates as the inverse to Don’t Breathe. Where the latter’s homeowner is blind, Maddie (Kate Siegel) in Hush is deaf. Just like how Alvarez’s picture uses the cinematography and the film’s aesthetic to help convey the ailment at hand, Flanagan’s film tries to make you experience Maddie’s deafness in a number of creative ways. When she finds herself the victim of a murderous invader, it is once again a situation where the camera is the one with ultimate control. Flanagan makes a point of showing off the geography of Maddie’s two-storey home in some very fluid, continuous shots. Flanagan also realizes that in a film with such a small playground, every camera movement magnifies and becomes ultra-important. As the film’s camera effectively builds tension and hides just like its intruder does, it also highlights ordinary objects like windows, insecticide, or a corkscrew, that all become major relics by the end of the film. Crucial tools that are dependent on Maddie’s inability to hear, such as her smoke alarm and her alarm clock get focused on in both regular contexts, before then later getting turned on their head in inventive ways. All of this being meditated by the camera. At moments of Maddie’s deepest desperation, the film depicts this carnage from outside of her home from a distance. The camera has the ability to leave while Maddie must fight to the bitter end.

Another film that accentuates this idea painfully well is David Fincher’s decisive film, Panic Room. This film has fallen into the reputation of being seen as “lesser Fincher” for a number of people, but it’s actually got the clearest execution of any of his pictures. Panic Room is a film that’s all about the agency of the camera. The principle of the home’s residents and antagonists being trapped in their surroundings while the camera has freedom is super prominent here. Fincher goes one step further with all of this by making his camera go through wires, fiber optics, and the “skeleton” of the house itself. While people are literally confined to a single room in this movie, the camera has so much power it can circulate through the house’s power supply. There are no obstacles for it at all. Fincher is arguably more interested in camera tricks and new sorts of digital zooms that continue to play with this idea, while other aspects of the film fall to the wayside. In this sense it’s easy to see where people lose interest in this film, but in terms of making a statement about home invasions and the lack of freedom we have, it’s an absolute goldmine.

Just like how Hush might be the alpha to Don’t Breathe’s omega, Korean master Park Chan-wook’s short film, Cut, from Three…Extremes very much feels like an intentional tribute to Fincher’s home invasion epic. Park’s camerawork follows many of the same patterns as Fincher does, with his camera doing impossible things as it moves through wires and cameras. Park’s Cut sees a famous director being attacked by a disgruntled extra who’s been in all of his films. A big point that’s being made here is the obfuscation between fiction and reality. The restless, sprawling cinematography helps highlight that on top of everything else. While other home invasion films see their victims being restricted to a tiny space, the director’s wife in this case is literally held in place by dozens of wires like some nightmarionette, while the director is tethered to a cord. Here the protagonists can barely move at all while the camera is doing somersaults around them and exiting this carnage whenever it sees fit.

Cut might push a lot of the fundamentals that are brought up here to the extreme, but increasingly impressive horror voices, Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett, hit a homerun with the reflexive home invasion flick, You’re Next. Erin (Sharni Vinston), the heroine of the film is with her boyfriend for his family’s reunion at their summer vacation home. Soon the lot of them start getting hunted down by relentless killers in animal masks. Just like how Scream sees characters that are self-aware to slashers, Erin is almost just as savvy towards home invasion etiquette. Whenever an attack goes down she reacts in the perfect way, with this unexpected approach taking the film far. While characterization takes You’re Next to new levels, it’s still the camera that ultimately pushes this ahead further.

Not only are major kills and devastating conclusions foreshadowed by innocent close-ups on certain architecture of the house, the camera also plays cruel games with you. While this family is under attack and suspicious of everything, the camera bombards the viewer with images from the home that could be dangerous. Then when they come back up later on, there is already a fear instilled in you whether anything happens or not. The camera continues to play games with the audience and characters’ hope. While the family seeks refuge next door, the camera already knows that the family is dead. It’s been there already. The same shots that prelude the massacre at the first house see echoing at this family’s; only they have no idea of the significance. The camera however is already marking them as corpses.

It’s interesting to note that when You’re Next came out, a lot of people cited it as ripping off Bryan Bertino’s The Strangers in a lot of ways. While The Strangers still certainly deserves to be mentioned in the same pantheon as the other home invasion horror films here, You’re Next progresses a lot of the ideas that it brings up. Both films happen to feature their antagonists wearing “cutely creepy” masks, but the other big similarity is that Bertino knows how to use the camera and makes it another presence in the house during this mayhem. The Strangers has a number of faults and kind of collapses towards the end, but it sprints to that conclusion with a knowing camera that never stops showing off the home. Shadows, curtains, and the corners of rooms become black holes of terror courtesy of the aggressive camera here. Even when things progress to the lawn and outside of the home, the camera keeps a high position watching over all. It’s steady and confident while the victims below are shaky and a mess.

The ultra-bloody French horror film, L’Interieur (Inside) and the Austrian home invasion tormenter, Funny Games, also both make sure to put their camera in the spotlight, realizing the power that it has. Both films expertly have their cameras take you on virtual tours of their homes in natural ways where it doesn’t even feel like you’re being taken through every inch of them. L’Interieur’s camera lingers on things like a pair of scissors or the bathroom, almost as if it’s psychically willing its character to consult these things. Funny Games’ camera meanwhile doesn’t want the people to have any agency at all. At one moment following extreme trauma, the camera remains still for several minutes to the point where you have to wonder if your copy has frozen or something’s gone wrong. It’s like the camera is holding these characters hostage. Later on, when a break is finally found, the camera is instrumental in hinting at a remote control, which ends up causing the film to rewind and tear hope from its victim’s hands. These people might be forced to see an unhappy ending, even if the camera is allowed to turn back time and do as it pleases. The villains in the film even break the fourth wall and wink at the audience, with the camera being what allows them to do so. You’re complicit in all of this.

Of course, with the popularity that this genre has seen, and due to how little a budget horror of this nature requires, these types of films have exploded lately. A lot of direct-to-video shlock and forgettable cinema comes and goes here because it focuses on the violence and anger of this concept rather than focusing on the relationship between the camera and the victims. Even productions of a bigger fare like Knock, Knock or Vacancy fail to connect in the end because the camera isn’t given enough of a role. As future home invasion films come—and even the idea of a Don’t Breathe 2 isn’t impossible—pay attention to how much (or how little) the camera is saying about its prison.