Wen 丨 West Parker
In 2016, the film "Hold Your Breath", filmed by Feder Alvarez, turned out to be a success (88% on Rotten Tomatoes) thanks to the anti-routine design of burglars who were tortured and killed by blind old men, as well as excellent sound design. Five years later, director Alvarez retired to production, with the first episode's writer Rodo Sayagas taking the lead and again acting as a screenwriter for Hold Your Breath 2.
"Hold Your Breath 2"
Saiages followed Alvarez for many years, working as a screenwriter for all of his works, including Ghostbusters and Scary Call, but regrettably did not learn the essence of Alvarez. This directorial debut did not continue the glory of the previous episode, the Rotten Tomatoes praise rate fell to 41%, IMDb and Douban did not score 7 points (both lower than the first episode), becoming another sequel to the dog-tailed sable.
As mentioned earlier, the success of the first episode of "Hold Your Breath" lies in the dense and anti-routine of its plot setting. A gang of hair thieves sneak into the home of a blind old man, not only stealing things, but also wantonly destroying, not paying attention to the owner. Who knows, this blind man is a former SEALs with explosive combat power, killing the hair thieves one by one. In the old man's basement, a young girl was imprisoned and forcibly conceived...
"Hold Your Breath"
So many contradictions and reversals, and the setting that each character is in a moral gray area, makes this film always in a tense and thrilling atmosphere, worthy of the representative work of the new horror film. And in Hold Your Breath 2, everything changed. The second episode pushes the story forward to more than eight years after the first episode, when the blind old man Carl already has a daughter Phoenix, and after experiencing the events of the first episode, Carl constantly trains Phoenix to remain vigilant and face the disaster that may come at any time.
However, disaster remains uninvited, with several drug dealers infiltrating Carl's house one night in an attempt to kidnap Phoenix. After a fierce fight, the drug dealer leader Roland suddenly tells the truth, it turns out that he is Phoenix's biological father...
In fact, works that feature the villain or "monster" of the first episode as the protagonist of the sequel to the series are not uncommon in film history. In the 1935 Frankenstein sequel, The Bride of Frankenstein, Frankenstein's role was accentuated and given the ability to speak, becoming the undisputed protagonist. In 2001, in the sequel to "The Silence of the Lambs", "Hannibal", the choreographer deepened Hannibal, a charismatic character who only had half an hour of scenes in the first episode, and made a new work around him.
Hannibal
James Cameron's Terminator 2: Judgment Day is considered one of the best sequels in film history, because in it, Cameron made an extremely bold subversion, turning the supervillain robot T800 in the first episode into a superhero who saved the protagonist's mother and son. But this reversal doesn't apply to all sequels.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Frankenstein and T800, the creation of human beings, do not apply to human morality, so they can be given different motivations in the sequel. Hannibal was an ogre in the first episode, and in the second episode he did not become a hero, still the elegant and cruel serial killer.
"Hold Your Breath 2" chose to completely flip the killer of the first episode in a heroic way, and the director chose to start the film from the perspective of the old man Carl, portraying it as a stern and slightly loving father figure in the first half of the film. However, for those old viewers of the series who still remember the first episode of the evil dark basement, it is obvious that they cannot accept such a transformation in the first place.
However, if you think about it, in fact, in the first episode, the choreographer has already shaped The character's obsession with having a daughter, so in the second episode, the adoption of a drug dealer's daughter is actually valid in terms of character motivation. But would such a murderous, unscrupulous paranoid maniac be a good father? You need to put a huge question mark, but this is not the problem that the director is trying to solve. Avoiding hasty changes is something that most viewers cannot accept.
Choosing Carl as the protagonist, he took the film to a completely different genre category, and the horror narrative created by the first episode was completely broken. In the first episode, we follow the thief's point of view into the home of the blind old man, and slowly witness the strange killing in the unknown. The director also uses the identity of the blind villain to amplify the details of the sound effects, achieving the ultimate horror and a sense of substitution. It is a model for the use of a large number of sound effects to create horror effects before "A Quiet Place".
In the second episode, because we substitute Carl and the little girl Phoenix, we see them oppressed by strange drug dealers, see the girl kidnapped, the father and daughter are separated, and finally Carl re-emerges from the jianghu to hunt down the drug dealer and succeed in revenge. In fact, it is no longer the horror genre of the first episode, but has become the action revenge film genre of "Hurricane Rescue" and "Fast Pursuit".
In fact, there are many points in the movie that can be deepened. The core conflict, the antagonism between Karl and Roland's adoptive and biological fathers, has been artificially reduced and turned into a simple opposition between good and evil. Roland's motivation for kidnapping Phoenix is to want the girl's heart, to save his dying girlfriend and the team's poisoner.
Thinking about it is very unreasonable, making this new villain character instantly face. Two fathers vying for a daughter caught between could have made a big fuss about the drama, but quickly flipped the page, wasting the strong moral dilemma that came with the setting. The only purpose of this setup is to justify Carl's revenge.
In the key point of conflict, the choreographer abandons the sublimation of the character and instead gives the character permission to kill. It can be seen that the rationality and moral struggle of the role are not important, everything only needs to serve the action, and inserting more plays in 90 minutes is the first priority of the choreographer.
The literary drama is perfunctory, the horror atmosphere is degraded, and only the blind fancy torture scene is still preserved in this episode. Karl killed people like a hemp, one of which sealed the drug dealer's mouth with glue to try to suffocate him to death, and was eventually punctured by another drug dealer with a screwdriver through the cheek ventilation.
Although it still has a bloody idea that is not inferior to the first part, it is quite hidden in the execution, and the shots that should be bloody are quickly taken, leaving only a small blood spot on the face. It may only be at the final climax, When Carl tries to pinch Roland's eyes like the magic mountain in "Game of Thrones", the scene of the eyeball flowing out is still worth mentioning. But such scenes are also rare, making it difficult for fans who want to watch action torture.
In the end-of-credits Easter egg, the director leaves a more open ending, where Karl is dead, but the dog returns to him. Given a reason to resurrect Carl in the next episode. But is such a monster who shouts his "guilty" confession still a monster?
In horror movies, the prodigal son's return is never what everyone wants to see. It's hard to imagine Freddie, Jason, or Mike Miles being human again. What makes monster movies good is that these monsters are higher than people and have more perverted values and missions, which "Hold Your Breath 2" could have done, but ultimately chose a different path.
There are too many action heroes in this world, but there are few monster villains who are as perverted as the first episode. If there's a third episode in this series, please bring back that blind killer.