Don't Breathe 2 - 4K Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

Don't Breathe 2



Movie:
4K Video:
Video: N/A
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score:

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Movie
The fact that the 2016 Don’t Breathe was going to get a sequel was pretty much guaranteed. The first film was actually really really good, being directed by the same man who did the Evil Dead remake, and it made some decent profit for a low budget horror/thriller. I really liked Stephen Lang as the sort of sympathetic monster. He played the part extremely well, and was a much better hyper violent thriller than The Purge was with Ethan Hawk (which was actually a pretty good movie in and of itself). The little tease at the end of Don’t Breathe with the Blind Man (Stephen Lang) smiling as he’s wheeled away pretty much giving everyone an open door for revisiting him. Well, that time is now, and the Blind Man is loose once again. This time they’ve changed things up a bit more, making him a sort of monstrous anti-hero instead of a true villain with some sympathetic traits. It’s an interesting twist, but kind of sucks a little bit of the horror element out of it in my opinion.

The film opens up with The Blind Man having acquired another “daughter” (or so it seems) in the form of young Phoenix (Madelyn Grace) whom he is homeschooling in an out of the way home in the country. Everything seems fine, with The Blind Man teaching Phoenix survival skills, as well as treating her quite well. That is until a creepy man named Raylan (Brendan Sexton III) comes a knocking, and like the teenagers of the first movie, is about to find out just what a blind old man can do in the dark.

While it seems to be a setup for The Blind Man to just regurgitate the happenings of the first film, it suddenly takes a sharp left once it’s revealed that Raylan is actually Phoenix’s father. However, just because he’s blood doesn’t make him the good guy in this story. Raylan has some VERY nefarious intentions of his own, and even his own flesh and blood is going to end up being a victim. But one thing that wasn’t exactly planned for was the love of the Blind Man for Phoenix. Yup, he had kidnapped another child to act as his own child that he lost years ago, but this time he actually bonded with her. He was keeping Phoenix safe when he found her after her parents had supposedly burned down their own house (turns out Raylan and mommy dearest were meth cooks) and when the innocent girl is taken from him, goes on the violent rampage that we all expected him to do, and he does so with bloody impunity.

The change of pace with the intentions of The Blind Man is kind of interesting. In the previous film he really was a sympathetic villain. Meaning he had his reasons that made you actually empathize with his plight, but he was a SAVAGE monster who was willing to kidnap and torture to get his mythical daughter back in some shape or form (watch Don’t Breathe to get my intimations). This time he’s found a daughter and while he’s grieving over his ipast misdeeds, has a chance to redeem himself and become the hero. It’s kind of strange and almost unsatisfying to see him the actual hero of the movie, and be sort of redeemed from his past. One of the biggest bits of satisfactions in the first film was to see him just tear things up as the monster he was. Now it’s more of a thriller action movie than thriller horror. It works and is a solid enough film, but it feels “lighter” in tone than the film that came before of it. Probably because it is directed by another director instead of Fede Alvarez, who is much more of horror director than Rodo Sayagues.




Rated R for strong bloody violence, gruesome images, and language




4K Video: Video: N/A

Honestly this is the first time I’ve seen this happen from a major studio for a new release 4K title. I’ve seen this happen for catalog titles from Sony and Paramount, but never for a new release (at least to my memory). That is, they have included ONLY the 4K UHD title and foregone the Blu-ray to make it a combo pack. As such I won’t be able to compare the 4K against the Blu-ray (and it’s kind of weird as the whole backwards compatibility of most combo packs is gone too), but either way the 4K UHD disc certainly looks great. The digitally shot film was shot using Arri Alexa mini cameras and then supposedly given a native 4K transfer (although IMDB lists the negative as 3.4K from the cameras) and the results are quite nice. The film is bathed in darkness (duh) and given a blue tinge that heavily permeates the entire look of the movie. There’s some instances of golden highlights and green, but that heavy blue filter is definitely the most prominent. There’s some amazing detail levels to be seen in the film, and even though we don’t get a whole ton of daylight shots, you can see the milky whites of The Blind Man’s eyes, as well as every crease and crinkle in Lang’s aging face. There’s some mild noise spikes and a few soft background shots, but overall this is a great looking image.







Audio:

Sony’s Dolby Atmos track (which I BELIEVE is unique to the 4K UHD disc and not the Blu-ray as per typical Sony habits) is a stunner of a track though. The film is very atmospheric and thrives off of directional shifts and creaks and groans in the darkness. Listening through the Blind Man’s sensitive ears you can literally hear a footstep off to the side of a room, or the snap of a board splinter behind you. The sonic levels of the LFE channel is incredibly well balanced for an action/horror track. By that I mean it’s definitely there in spades, but doesn’t have to integrate itself with the force of a howitzer into EVERY second of the movie. Soft moments are quiet and gentle, with some minor thumps here and there, but it can leap out of NOWHERE and just slam you into the seats with incredible moments of low end power. Dialog is crystal clear, whether it be the light whispering of the men in the dark, to the screams and yells as our terrifying “hero” tears into them like tissue paper.





Extras:

• Never-Before-Seen Alternate Ending
• "Friends & Filmmakers" Featurette
• "Bad Man (Slang is Back)" Featurette
• "Designing Deception" Featurette
• Audio Commentaries With Filmmakers

Final Score:
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At the end of the day, Don’t Breathe 2 is actually a very fun hyper violent thriller. The kills are awesome, Stephen Lang eats it up as the creepy blind man, and Madelyn Grace does incredibly well as Phoenix. The ending once more sets up the film for a sequel, but I REALLY don’t want this to become another “franchise” where each subsequent sequel gets further and further away from what made the original 1 or 2 films good. The 4K UHD looks and sounds awesome for sure, and while the movie isn’t AS great or inventive as Don’t Breathe, I still recommend it is a fun sequel if you enjoyed the first movie.


Technical Specifications:

Starring: Stephen Lang, Madelyn Grace, Brendan Sexton III, Adam Young, Rocci Williams, Christian Zagia
Directed by: Rodo Sayagues
Written by: Rodo Sayagues, Fede Alvarez
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1 HEVC
Audio: English: Dolby Atmos (Dolby TrueHD 7.1 Core),
Subtitles: English, English SDH, French, Spanish
Studio: Sony
Rated: R
Runtime: 99 Minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: October 26th, 2021

Recommendation: Fun Watch