Film review: ‘Don’t Breathe’

There are two primary concerns in Hollywood cinema today:

1. Whether superheroes feel emotionally supported by their superhero friends

2. What happens when men lock women in basements

“Don’t Breathe” is the second kind of movie. Following the bloody footprints of “10 Cloverfield Lane” and many others, Argentine director Fede Alvarez explores anew Americans’ bottomless appetite for watching characters in dank boxes fight for their lives.

The story begins with a youthful trio of burglars breaking into empty homes and stealing enough to scratch out a living. The leader is Money (Daniel Zovatto, giving off a repellent, Kevin-Federline-in-2006 vibe), a man so irritating in look and manner that you immediately begin rooting for his swift death. He works with his girlfriend, Rocky (Jane Levy), and the closest thing the dim troupe has to a mastermind, Alex (Dylan Minnette).

Alex sticks with the squad thanks to a life-threateningly ill-advised crush on Rocky and is derided by Money as “a little bitch” and, perhaps more offensively, “Judge Judy.” The team unwisely follows the advice of their recalcitrant fence who explains, “You want money, steal money.” So they set their eyes on a final, big score – $300,000 cash – revealing a frightening ignorance of how much even an associate’s degree runs you in 2016.

With these funds, Rocky plans to say, “Hola California, bye-bye Detroit.” And indeed the Motor City of “Don’t Breathe” is depicted as if one of those “ruin porn” coffee table books has come to life. The movie, however, was shot in Hungary, because the filmmakers wanted to assure that Detroit was denigrated, but in no way enriched by the film’s production.

On to squalid Buena Vista Street – a name selected for maximum ironic heft – where lives the unsighted gent with the dough called, for clarity’s sake, the Blind Man (Stephen Lang). Upon entrance, Alex learns two crucial things about robberies in rapid succession: always charge your cell phone before a gig and never do one last score to win the heart of a woman who’s sleeping with someone else.

The Blind Man seems to have spent his lonely days lifting weights, stowing weapons everywhere and living out “Stand Your Ground” fantasies. He’s redecorated his space with lots of bars on windows and locks on doors (in addition to removing all crosses from the walls, of course). And, if the money the crew seeks is easily found in the safe upstairs, what, then, is behind the triple-bolted cellar door? As it turns out, mostly leftover props and tropes from other horror movies. When Alex and Rocky try to escape, every cell phone buzz, floorboard creak and, yes, breath draws a violent response.

The film has one great, if fairly obvious, sequence in which the Blind Man hits the lights and Alex and Rocky must negotiate the basement in total darkness. “Now you see what I see,” he intones. The camera shows their bodies glowing slightly white, with pupils dilated like saucers, the opposite of the Blind Man’s milky blue irises. Theirs is the outsider’s vision of Detroit – pitch black and lit only by firing pistols.

“Don’t Breathe” is showing at the Sonoma 9 Cinemas. Rated R. Running time 1:28. Visit cinemawest.com.