Movies
‘Don’t Breathe 2’ Carves Out $10.6M Box Office Opening
It’s extremely hard not to read into the box office numbers during this bewildering time and even more difficult not to project some sort of bias into editorial. As much as sites love to speak with authority on the numbers, it’s a tough task even under normal circumstances. What’s good? What’s bad? What’s expected? How does it affect VOD numbers? Yadda. Yadda.
Summer kicked off with a bang with indications that we were almost out of the woods, only things have taken a turn for the worse, not only here in the States, but globally. Confidence in returning to theaters has dwindled over the past few weeks and movie fans seem to be fine waiting for a home video release rather than risk a trip to a cinema. August is also a notoriously slow month, especially with kids returning to school. There are factors everywhere, but ultimately, we’re in a global pandemic that’s unheard of. All bets are off and we – the entertainment industry – need to stop projecting our concepts/theories/etc. into the box office. I am just as guilty.
With that said, Sony Screen Gems was already deep into promoting Don’t Breathe 2 and committed to a release over this weekend. It was able to carve out $10.6M, only being beaten out by the critically-celebrated Free Guy, starring Ryan Reynolds. Globally, it added $3.4M for a $14M opening.
The budget for Don’t Breathe 2, this time directed by Evil Dead and Don’t Breathe co-writer Rodo Sayagues, is reportedly only $15M, which means this sequel will eventually hit the profit zone. Will there be a third film? I suppose it’s possible, but would consider it unlikely at this point. Time will tell.
In Don’t Breathe 2, which Meagan Navarro called a “less suspenseful, more savage sequel,” the Blind Man has been hiding out for years in an isolated cabin and has taken in and raised a young girl orphaned from a house fire.
Their quiet existence is shattered when a group of kidnappers show up and take the girl, forcing the Blind Man to leave his safe haven to save her.
This weekend Searchlight Pictures releases The Night House and next week we’ll finally say his name five times and witness the return of Candyman. I’m hopeful, but also worried. Let’s see how things unwind over the next few weeks…
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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