SXSW 2016 Interview: Fede Alvarez Discusses DON’T BREATHE

The film that was most shrouded in mystery going into the 2016 SXSW Film Festival was undoubtedly Fede Alvarez’s Don’t Breathe, his sophomore directorial effort and first film since 2013's Evil Dead. The highly intense thriller stars Jane Levy, Dylan Minnette and Daniel Zovatto as a trio of thieves who break into a blind man’s home (portrayed by Stephen Lang) and quickly find out just why their plan to rob him was ill-conceived. Daily Dead had the opportunity to speak with Alvarez the day after the premiere of Don’t Breathe and he discussed reuniting with Levy and working with Lang to create the film’s ferociously unstoppable villain.

Last night, you said that you really appreciated being involved with a movie that hasn’t had the opportunity to be overhyped. It was really fun to experience Don’t Breathe without knowing much because it added a lot to the experience. Between this and 10 Cloverfield Lane, another movie that came out of nowhere this year, I'm hoping this is a trend we see more of in the future because I enjoy the surprises.

Fede Alvarez: Yeah, me too. The particulars for marketing can be hard because you want to get as many people you can in the theater, but you don't want to tell too much about what the movie or story is. It is tricky, but at least last night I got away with it. Not even giving a title before last night and then giving you everything at once in one night makes for an exciting and hopefully fun experience. And while you're watching the movie—because you know very little—it really can go anywhere. There is nothing that cannot happen. You don't know anything. You don't even know exactly what the genre is. It may be supernatural, it may not be—who knows? Feeling the excitement that people had in the room last night—they had no idea where the story was going or what was going to eventually happen—it was fun for me.

For Evil Dead and especially now in Don’t Breathe, I like that you give us characters that are complicated, but still engaging. Is it a hard line to walk, as a storyteller, to make sure that you create characters that folks want to get invested in even though they're not doing things you may necessarily approve of?

Fede Alvarez: It is, somewhat. You've seen it in every mobster movie ever. Mobsters are bad buys, but usually there's somebody even worse than they are, and so you root for them. There are many ways to tell a story about characters that you normally wouldn't like and get you to connect with them emotionally.

What's interesting to me is to not feed you who you should like and who you should hate. I need a more complex dynamic than that. If everything is laid out in the first ten minutes of the movie and right away it makes you go, "Oh, this is the bad guy", and you know everything, it takes away from the experience. I was interested to see what happened to make them evolve and see if you can still connect with them through those changes. I remember every time I pitched this idea to someone, they would ask me what the movie is about, and I would lay it all out for them. Most of the time they would respond with, "Well, who is the good guy?" My answer was always, "You tell me when you see it."

I was glad to see you working with Jane again. I know you put her through the paces on Evil Dead, but this was so much more grueling. Can you tell me a bit about that kinship you’ve built up with her over the last few years? Everybody's great, but she becomes the heart of this story over time.

Fede Alvarez: Yeah, no doubt. When I was watching her in the movie last night, I was so proud of her. She did such a great job. Yes, it's never easy, but when things are easy for an actor or even in the case of directors, you probably end up with a bad movie. A great movie is never easy to do, particularly in this kind of genre. Maybe in comedy it’s different; you’re having a lot of laughs, it’s great. But in this kind of movie, if everybody's having a great time and sharing laughs behind the scenes, that’s probably not a totally great thing. I can’t imagine that on the set of Psycho or The Exorcist that everyone was sitting around cracking jokes between takes. This movie definitely had some intense moods on the harder days.

But Jane and I are like an old married couple. Some days we get along great. Some days we didn’t. But we both respect each other a lot, and she was definitely put through a lot in this one. What you said is spot-on, though. Evil Dead was very physical, but this one was a lot more psychologically-driven for her. She was really going. She's really good at what she does, she really gets her characters. I try to always give my actors the real experience. I don't want to be like, "Imagine that there's a guy here, and imagine this is like…" I give it to them. I make it happen.

I did try to keep these guys apart from Stephen during production, though, because most of the time I didn't want them to socialize. That approach worked because they were terrified of him most of the time, even though he’s not a scary guy in reality. Same for Jane, it was really uncomfortable for her during some of the scenes. He's a professional and a gentleman, but she was just scared of his character.

I said that Stephen feels like “Jaws with a beard” because he’s so relentless—he just keeps coming and coming. It’s incredible that this role doesn't have a ton of dialogue and there's so much he has to do without saying a lot. What was the process of developing a character with Stephen that's like a force of nature?

Fede Alvarez: He brought a lot to the table regarding the character; how he speaks, how he walks, even. What was on the page already was the fact that he did not talk a lot. He doesn't have to. There's nothing to talk about. In the original Terminator I always loved that the monster didn't say much of anything. It doesn't matter if the robot can talk or not. There's nothing to be said. There is a mission he has to do, and here it's the same. Once you understand what's happening, there's no way he can let them go and say, "Promise me you won't tell them about my life and what's going on here."

It was one of those characters that he was very happy with because he understood exactly what he was doing every step of the way. There was no discussion about, "Wait, what's my motivation here? Do we need to do this because I'm evil?" It was never because he was evil. That was something we also agreed on right away on the first day. People would look at us on set like we were insane because we were talking about him all the time as the hero of this movie.

That was the story, to him and to me. Punks have broken into your house and they want to take your fucking money. You're mad because your daughter died and you got a settlement and so now these guys think they are going to take it away from you. No fucking way. You're going to do whatever you can to stop it. Plus, they come in with a gun, threatening this blind man with a gun. Bastards. I was getting him pumped about all of that. It was so easy to do that. It makes complete sense.

Even the story, and I don't want to spoil anything, but when you learn more, from his point of view, he was still trying to make a situation that was wrong, right again. It was very easy to see him as a hero.

Especially considering the fact that he's blind, how crucial was sound to this film? I also really loved the cinematography as well.

Fede Alvarez: I was lucky to work with some really good professionals on this film. On the sound side, it was Justin Miller and Jonathan Wells, who were the same guys on Evil Dead. Their impressive sound design work added a lot, as well as Roque Banos, who was the composer from Evil Dead. They all made it sound perfect. We never wanted to overdo it; I hate when the music is more exciting than what's actually happening on the screen. Let the images do their thing and the music is there to support it when we need it. Same with the sounds. There was so much room for them to play. This film has these long moments of complete silence, which is not forced into the movie, as it makes complete sense, and I love those moments so much. You're trying to escape a blind man's house, so you better not make a sound, right?

Because it was on the page originally, it made it very easy for them to play and bring everything they wanted to the table. As far as the cinematography, I had the privilege on this one to work with Pedro Luque, who was my DP on Panic Attack!, the short that got me Evil Dead before. We’ve done a bunch of stuff together since we were 20. We have very similar sensitivities when it comes to the camera and lighting. I trust him so much. If he wanted to do something, I could go with it just knowing that it was going to work. The thing I'm most proud of is the whole full darkness scene. That was really incredible and groundbreaking the way it turned out.