Sony, out now on digital, 4K, Blu-ray and DVD

Warning: Contains spoilers for Don’t Breathe.

‘Is God bad?’

In 2016 director Fede Álvarez, along with co-writer Rodo Sayagues, delivered an effective horror-thriller, Don’t Breathe, revolving around a home invasion robbery gone wrong. They introduced an iconic villain in the form of ‘The Blind Man’ (Stephen Lang, an equally chilling presence in Avatar), who stalked the trio of youngsters trying to steal from his trap-laden house. This belated sequel sees long-time collaborators Sayagues and Álvarez switching the roles of director and co-writer, coming up with something that’s very different from the original.

Taking place after the events in the original movie, we catch up with The Blind Man – who now has a name, Norman Nordstrom – holing up in a new home and enjoying life as a father once more, having lost his first daughter in a car accident. Phoenix (Madelyn Grace from Grey’s Anatomy) is eleven years old and being given survival training by her dad; her mother having died in the fire he rescued the little girl from. ‘The world’s not safe,’ Nordstrom tells her – and he should know!

But it’s about to get whole lot less safe, because some heavies – led by ex-vet and generally nasty piece of work Raylan (Brendan Sexton III from El Camino) – have targeted both his place and his daughter, though not before having fun with family friend Hernandez (Penny Dreadful: City of Angels’ Stephanie Arcila). And off we go again, as the goons work their way through Nordstrom’s house – trying to avoid the traps, not to mention the seemingly unstoppable wheezy, sightless ex-Navy SEAL. Will he be able to protect his daughter from these guys, and the secrets they bring with them?

Don’t Breathe 2 is a tricky movie to review. I absolutely loved the original, mainly because of the suspense and, yes, sheer terror of watching as the intruders were stalked by the mysterious Blind Man character. The sequel has similar elements, but from the get-go we’re asked to believe that the villain of the first film is now a good guy. That moral ambiguity was absolutely in the original: no, the kids shouldn’t have been breaking in and trying to steal his cash; but also, The Blind Man shouldn’t have been doing a lot of the things he was doing either. As he admits towards the end of the sequel: ‘I’m a monster.’ Well, yeah.

We’re asked as an audience if what he’s done since then, saving and looking after Phoenix, makes up for everything else that came beforehand. It helps the people he’s taking down this time – like a cross between Rambo and Rutger Hauer’s character from Blind Fury – are much, much worse than him (just wait till you see what their endgame is!). It’s a bit like when Dexter or Hannibal Lecter take on the nasties… So, in one way, the sequel is definitely presenting something new and not re-treading old ground – whilst at the same time retaining elements that made the first one popular – but in another the audience is being asked to re-evaluate how they feel about an anti-hero they fell in love with precisely because of what he did previously. Lang’s performance is, once again, the highlight here whatever way you cut it, and there are the requisite gory scenes you’d expect: you’ll never look at superglue/spades/hammers in the same way again (just like you won’t with turkey basters from DB1). How much you enjoy the movie will depend massively which side of the fence you come down on, though…

Bonus features here include three very short featurettes (none are much longer than 5 mins): ‘Friends and Filmmakers’ in which we hear primarily from Álvarez (‘We really try to tell stories you haven’t heard a millions times.’) and Sayagues (‘The story departs into new territory, but the thrills are still the same.’), with people like Lang and Grace chipping in; ‘Bad Man’, which is basically about Lang and his character, where we also hear from the likes of Brendan Sexton III (‘The first time I met Stephen, I said: “Hello, sir.” He said: “It’s not sir, it’s Slang.’); and ‘Designing Deception’ brings in people like Production Designer David Warren (‘The house is like the mother that’s missing from the family.’) and Stunt Co-ordinator James Grogan (‘I’ve never done horror before, so I wanted to try it. See what it’s like.’). There’s also a choice of commentary, one in English from Sayagues and one in Spanish from the filmmaking pair, plus a 56 second extended ending.

Verdict: And, breathe… ‘Now you’re gonna see what I see!’ 7/10                      

Paul Kane

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