Don’t Breathe Review: The silence of scare
In the current era of Michael Bay school of action (look up “Bayhem”) the audience is constantly bombarded with sounds of a gas tank explosion close to every 5 minutes. Although the audio palette has diversified for a lot of film making magic from crushing a bag of chips to emulate buildings being stepped on in Godzilla(1954) to the spectrum of strange alien sounds you hear in SciFi movies of today.
The usage of silence in cinema was know to be neatly executed by Martin Scorsese, especially in Raging Bull where the silence lingers on for a while sometimes in order to accentuate the visuals further and create a feeling of isolation. Later on war movies used the mechanic of silence to create a feeling of post explosion tinnitus where the violence is juxtaposed with a serene absence of sound.
The 80’s horror-thriller genre was always full of ambient dissonant synth chords being played to create an environment of threat and gloom. As a means of reversing that trend, the horror movies that came out in the next decade started employing dead silence in their scenes way more to generate tension. And it works. It’s an age old trick but it works. But there’s one issue with that.
Due to the overuse, that silence started being a trope on how it was always followed by a jump scare. And a jump scare is what every horror movie heavily relies on to terminate that silence, hence can only be used sparingly. Otherwise you’re always prepared.
And this is where Don’t Breathe wins. The silence is not used as a gimmick but as a part of the movie itself, since it is so embedded in the plot. The movie, especially in the first half, does an amazing job of creating a sense of impending doom with the extended quietness. Since the audience is always waiting for the silence to be cut off by a sudden scare, the extended silence thus helps in elevating that feeling of :
Don’t Breathe is a in fact healthy mix of Wait until Dark(1967) and Panic Room(2002), and though it might seem like it does a borrow a lot from these sources, it still manages to carve out a new feeling of dread and paralysing fear every non breathing minute. The usage of low and almost no lighting, creaking wooden boards and the deafening silence constantly build up the air of tension to the point where you can hear yourself breathing.
The characters and their moral choices are fairly cliched with the token rotten apple, the geek with a confused conscience and the “I’m a survivor” lead female. Somehow the character development takes a back seat apart from one final morality questioning choice. Which isn’t that big a problem. It still does its share of jump scares but fortunately the creepier moments in the film are the times when you feel something is just about to happen without it actually not culminating to a result.
For the constant feeling of lingering threat and things that could only go downhill, the film does a decent job of keeping you on the edge. Though not a masterpiece of any sort, it’s still a fun but tense watch.
