Having helmed a remake of Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead which
was greeted with either great derision or unbridled admiration, director Fede
Alvarez decided he would take his time before embarking on his next movie. Not
consciously seeking inspiration, it came to him when he and his friend
screenwriter Rodo Sayagues were spit-balling ideas while driving back to Los
Angeles from the San Diego Comic-Con two years ago. The final result is Don’t Breathe, a
decidedly different sort of film from The Evil Dead but one that will no
doubt please fans of the genre. Reuniting
with Dead star Jane Levy and working with Champaign native Dylan Minnette and Avatar star Stephen Lang, the director has fashioned a very effective siege
thriller that doesn’t revolve around a supernatural threat but rather a blind
man who sets out to defend his home from three young thieves who wish to rob
him. While the premise is the very
definition of “simplicity,” Alvarez and Sayagues were able to come with enough
surprises to keep audiences glued to their seats during its taut 88 minute
running time.
In Chicago recently for a screening of Don’t Breathe for
the annual Bruce Campbell Horror Film Festival, I was able to sit down with
Alvarez and Lang to discuss the making of the movie, the challenges of crafting
a feature with a human threat rather than a supernatural one and the
difficulties of playing a blind man. Both
men were dressed appropriately for the occasion – all in black – with Alvarez,
a bundle of energy, seemingly ready to burst from his tee-shirt, his enthusiasm
for this project barely contained. Lang,
with a blazer to compliment his attire, was more calm and reserved, a model of
physical fitness whose youthful appearance belies his 64 years of age.
I asked Alvarez about the challenges in bringing something
new to a genre that seemingly exhausted all of its fresh ideas years ago. “ It is a challenge but it shouldn’t be,” he
said after some reflection. “You know, I
saw an interview with John Carpenter (director of Halloween and The Thing)
on YouTube not long ago and he was asked a similar question. The funny thing is that this interview was
done in 1982, so that was an issue back then,” he said with a laugh. “The one thing I wanted to make sure of
before doing a film after The Evil Dead was to stay away from any hot
trends. You don’t want to come off as a
copycat, you should always want to go in a different direction. I think you end up challenging yourself that
way and wind up with a better story.”
While movies with a supernatural premise are more likely to
rely on the fantastic to explain and move the story along, those that take
place in the real world must be grounded to a certain extent and follow an
acceptable sense of logic. Alvarez was
very aware of this when working on Breathe and knew he had to toe the line
where his observant audience was concerned.
“Rodo and I were very faithful to the truth and knew we had to be
honest. Audiences are very smart and
they pick up on any lapses in logic or if you suddenly change the established
rules of a film. That being said, you
can’t just treat your characters like they are puppets on a string in the
service of the plot. What they do has to
seem natural and in line with what they would do according to the history you
come up with for them. Otherwise, a story will fall apart quicker than you can
keep it together.”
This foundation of reality was something that appealed to
Lang when he was handed the script.
Equally appealing was the challenge of realistically playing a blind man
who’s able to go toe-to-toe with three much young characters in a convincing way. I asked the actor what his first step was in
getting ready for the role.
“The first thing I did was become familiar with the house,”
said Lang, who seemed eager to discuss his method. “This man has retreated to
this home so he obviously knows it like the back of his hand. I made sure I knew how many steps there were
on the staircase, how many rungs there were on the ladder to the basement. You’ll see that I often have my hand out to
feel the sides of the walls so we made sure the paint is a bit more worn in
these spots. So, all these little
details helped me to pull this off, I hope, in a convincing manner.”
I related an anecdote I’d heard about how Al Pacino, while
giving his Oscar-winning performance as a blind man in Scent of a Woman, said
he only concentrated on his peripheral vision while doing the role. I asked Lang about his own technique, “Well,
I have all the respect in the world for Al,” he said with a laugh, “but I went
a more practical route. I wore lenses
that eliminated 60% of my vision and Fede used low light throughout the house,
which obscured things as well. “
While dealing with sightless character proved challenging in
and off itself, another impediment for Lang was the fact that the Blind Man has
almost no dialogue in the film. “I
practiced long and hard to make sure my voice sounded like a door with a rusty
hinge for the few times I did speak,” Lang recounts. “Really, these are the
sorts of challenges any actor looks for and I had to do a great deal of soul
searching to make sure I discovered the truth about this man.”
The Blind Man engages in more than one instance of
hand-to-hand combat in the film but none was more challenging than a fight
between Lang and Minnette in a laundry room, as the claustrophobic nature of
the setting created more than a few possibilities of injury. “Dylan and I had to be very careful and we
choreographed that sequence extensively before we shot it,” Lang said. “There
are many sharp edges and places where you could cut or hit yourself that it was
a challenge to do this convincingly.
Dylan is very strong and we were able to go at each other with equal
strength to make it look realistically. Of course, no matter how careful you
are, you’re going to look down and see you have a bump here and a bruise
there. But Dylan was a good sport and
hard worker and it paid off in that scene.”
I couldn’t let Alvarez escape without asking him about his
working relationship with Levy, who might be familiar to viewers from the TV
sit-com Suburgatory. The director admitted he “put her through hell,” during
the making of The Evil Dead and I wondered if he had to go out of his way to
convince her to work with him again. “I love her because she always give 100%
on the set and will bleed for a film, which she literally did time and time
again on Dead,”he said. “Really, we’re like an old married couple. We fight
on the set and argue but are able to put it behind us because we know each of
us committed to the film. I also love
that she hasn’t done much, she has a clean slate if you will, so I continue to
be able to surprise audiences with her as they have no preconceptions of her.”
As for what’s next for Alvarez, he doesn’t have a clue. “I’m really not worried about it,” he said
with a shrug of his shoulders. “I know
inspiration will come and whatever that may be, I’ll develop it and see where
it takes me. Not knowing is really part
of the fun.”
This article appears in Aug 25-31, 2016.
