"Don't Breathe," and the Trope of the Blind Super Villain
"Don't Breathe" is an intense and twisted movie full of cliches that can entertain for a single viewing.
A blind character with superhuman hearing abilities that allow them to be an all-around badass is a popular trope in fiction. It is the main idea behind Daredevil. Often the character is a good guy, as in the film Ashes of Time, in which the Blind Swordsman is tasked with protecting a village from bandits.
In Fede Álvarez’s 2016 home invasion thriller Don’t Breathe, the homeowner, Norman Nordstrom, is shown to be even more skilled of a fighter and more evil than the burglars who invade his home looking to steal $300,000.
Don’t Breathe is built around a weak plot and unsympathetic characters. Three people are robbing the home of a blind Gulf War veteran to steal the 300 grand he got as a payout in a civil case over a woman’s killing of his child. One of the robbers brings a gun. The others proceed with the robbery attempt after seeing him with the gun. Probably the most innocent character is Cindy, the woman who crashed her car into the child—indeed, it was shown she was acquitted at the criminal trial before Nordstrom abducted her and raped her with a turkey baster.
Don’t Breathe is not the kind of movie that needs a strong plot, however. It is non-stop carnage from start to finish. The movie writers took the advice to begin at the beginning and began there. They began on a pothole-riddled street in Detroit, and they invaded their first house by two-and-a-half minutes into the film.
Oh, they did some bullshit talking about their backgrounds and whatnot. How they were raised without parents, and they were so unfortunate and other cliches and blah blah. They were just asshole characters who thought they were entitled to take other people’s things, and they weren’t personified enough to make the viewer even imagine that they could possibly be real people who had had a troubled childhood. Maybe that’s just what a gruesome homicidal thriller needs to justify torturing or killing everyone? Or maybe it could have gone smoother without giving the pointless, fake backstory.
To be honest, I didn’t remember the beginning because I was giving Queen Nazz a massage at the time. The real movie begins at 14 minutes when they invade the blind psychopath’s home looking for his $300,000.
Nordstrom knows exactly where the burglars are at all times. He jumps from room to room without moving. There are scenes where he appears inside an interior room of the house while the robbers are by the side of a window, and then, moments later, he is shooting at them from outside that window.
TV Tropes claims that Nordstrom’s disability-induced superpowers are downplayed.
Disability Superpower: Downplayed. The Blind Man's blindness is mostly played as a critical weakness that allows the thieves to stay alive as long as they do. The one time he turns it to his advantage is when he shuts off the lights in the basement, and it's only his familiarity with his surroundings that enables him to get the advantage, not super-senses.
Alvarez himself said, "Sometimes you naturally give them powers and make them more menacing than a normal person, so we thought what if we do the other way around and take his eyes out and make him a blind person."
Nordstrom was moving in and around the house faster than any sighted person. He isn’t taken down until the female burglar activates a car alarm, and then, suddenly, he cannot fire his gun accurately. That scene implies that he was using super-human hearing to his advantage to track his victims. The title of the movie implies it.
Review: Nazz and I watched Don’t Breathe on a weekday night while I gave her a massage. It entertained us while we half paid attention for 1.5 hours. The scenes were high-intensity and full of shock value. Was it a good movie? I can’t say it was from a general perspective. But it was probably a good genre movie.
Speaking of shock value? After Nordstrom shoots and kills Cindy, the woman he kidnapped and raped, then he tries to rape the female burglar in the same manner. Don’t click the video clip if you don’t want a spoiler.
The scene with the turkey baster in the basement highlights the depraved and unpredictable nature of Nordstrom. He’s not some typical criminal committing a sadly common and predictable crime. He’s not interested in penetrating her with himself, as one would expect of such an evil man. His motivations, then, are unknowable, and that makes him all the more scary.
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