Avis des critiques

Creating true crawl-under-the-seat, palm-piercing, cover-your-eyes tension is a rare, undervalued cinematic art. There's certainly no shortage of filmmakers who give it a try, but only a select few would make Hitchcock proud... Though relatively new to the game, Fede Alvarez is already one of those select few, quickly proving himself a standout master of suspense.

Alvarez maps and reveals the home where most of the film takes place with precision, making it clear where characters are in relation to one another without ever insisting. It's a small thing, but a forgotten one, and it makes each cascading set piece a terrifying delight.

Alvarez, who directed the 2013 Evil Dead remake, and his cinematographer, Pedro Luque, have clearly thought hard about what to show clearly and what images to mute: Sometimes we don't know exactly what we're looking at, and we end up peering at the screen as if we too had raisins for eyes. Other times, there's marvelous clarity, and Alvarez's attention to details enhances the tension.

Don't Breathe's sustainment of its corkscrew tension is so elegant and methodical as to feel dance-like, though the script's calculated intrusions of backstory are ultimately compromising... In the end, then, the cost of wallowing in Alvarez's gorgeous technical bravura is to condescend to a city's ruin.