Fede Alvarez returns to SXSW with the personal thriller ‘Don’t Breathe’

The official South by Southwest festival program and schedule had the film listed as “Untitled Fede Alvarez/Ghost House Thriller” for the names of its director and production company. The synopsis was a brief, oblique two sentences and there were no photos released. The audience arrived at the Stateside Theatre in Austin, Texas, for a late-night screening of this mysterious film to find the marquee proclaim the film’s title as “Don’t Breathe.”

Alvarez himself took to the stage to introduce the film, exuberantly saying, “Really what I like the most about tonight is you don’t know … about this movie. There’s been nothing, you haven’t see a … trailer to spoil the whole thing, there hasn’t been a teaser that is … misleading, there hasn’t been any of that. You don’t how it is – it could be a piece of …, could be great. I am so excited about that. Everybody overhypes everything and trashes everything, so I am so happy you don’t know ... Hopefully you enjoy it.”

Alvarez first shot to attention with his spirited short films and then made the 2013 remake/reboot adaptation of “Evil Dead,” which likewise played an opening night slot at SXSW.

“For me, I want to tell you, honestly I feel this is my first film,” Alvarez said while introducing “Don’t Breathe.” “‘Evil Dead’ was technically my first film, but it was Sam Raimi, it was me, it was Rob Tappert, it was a lot of people. This is the most personal film, I guess.”

In the film a trio of youthful thieves (played by Jane Levy, Dylan Minnette and Daniel Zovatto) break into homes using codes and keys swiped from a security firm, and they plan to next hit the isolated house of a blind man who they think has a lot of cash in his house. But the man (Stephen Lang), a military vet with a history of personal tragedy, turns out to be no pushover and soon the thieves are fighting for their lives trying to escape.

Though there are no supernatural elements, it’s difficult not to think of the film as a sort of haunted house story as the young trio are thwarted at every turn by the blind man’s rugged smarts and the fact he knows every inch of the house. Long passages of the film feature little to no dialogue, though it is far from a silent film, with an evocative score by Ronque Baños and crack sound design building the sense of tension as the story moves in some wildly unexpected, deeply uncomfortable directions.

After the film, Alvarez returned to the stage, this time with co-writer Rodo Sayagues and actors Minnette and Zovatto in tow. The four of them had an easy, free-flowing dynamic, reminding each other of stories to tell, such as how Lang would sometimes genuinely get physical with the other actors or the cast of local characters who hung around the location while the film was shooting exteriors in Detroit. (The film’s impressive interior set was built in Budapest.)

“Detroit is like my hometown in Uruguay, it used to be great in the ‘50s,” said Alvarez. “And after that was done we grew up hearing stories about how great our city was when we weren’t born. So that’s why we connected to Detroit a lot.

“And that’s kind of what the story is about,” he added. “It’s really about this older generation trying to force the new generation into their … The older generation … up this generation and they want to break free from that.”

A question from the audience returned to how Alvarez introduced the film by calling it personal and asked him to further explain how so.

“I think it’s personal because of those themes I was talking about, the previous generation trying to force their failure on you and on us,” he said. “But I think it’s mostly that on ‘Evil Dead’ we were faced with the challenge of Sam Raimi asking, ‘Do you want to do a new ‘Evil Dead,’ and we felt the same way you did, ‘… you guys, are you … crazy?’ And then we started thinking, well this might be our chance to actually make a movie so we should at least give it a shot.

“But this time was different, we thought if ‘Evil Dead’ worked, Hollywood would give us at least a chance to make another movie. And you face a blank page, we wanted to do something that was based on nothing and just give you guys an original story you hadn’t seen before. That’s why it feels more personal, its 100% our thing. It doesn’t mean we’re twisted ... that want to do this thing in our basement.”

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