Hello everyone, I am the captain, today continue to recommend a thriller, released in 2016, due to the existence of a large number of bloody violence and even challenging values of the scene, belongs to the R-rated restricted film, so it could not be released in mainland China that year, but this piece of internal and external network evaluation is quite good, Douban 7.1, IMdb 7.1, MTC 71 points, Rotten Tomatoes freshness 88% / popcorn index 78%.
It's Hold Your Breath, Don't Breathe.
The film cost less than 10 million, and finally the global box office has soared more than 150 million, is another successful case of small and broad, another type of film model, well received and popular, it is worth a look, just look at the cover, you will think it is "A Quiet Place".
But "Hold Your Breath" has no man-eating monsters, and the background setting is not the end of the disaster or any wasteland world, just a modern urban crime film, the core is about the sinister nature of human nature and the torture of road ethics. The 88 minutes of the film are just right, without a little dragging and lengthy, on the contrary, it is very fascinating, and the suspenseful atmosphere and exciting tension of a thriller are very good.
Most importantly, in the process of watching, our conscience will continue to be subverted, and our empathy will continue to be reversed.
The story tells that three young thieves who are good at "breaking through the door" find out that in an old town in a remote suburb, there is a widowed veteran, and the veteran's daughter died in a car accident, so the veteran received a compensation of $300,000.
When they went to step on the point, they learned that the veteran was still blind, but the three of them still did not dispel this idea of conscience and acted according to the plan at night.
One of the three men and women is a couple, the thinking is extremely sinister, there is no guilt or weakness for the goal of this matter, and constantly brainwashing and lobbying against another young male companion of the team who can't bear it, which is called a hill, a nest of snakes and rats, although they successfully touched the house, but the widowed and blind veteran was awakened, and strangled the couple and the man with one hand.
The remaining two people did not expect that an old man with blind eyes had such a terrible fighting power, seriously underestimated each other, in fact, although the old man was blind, the house was his turf after all, he had long been familiar with the road, and the access control system of the house was quite strict, the so-called fierce tiger fighting the head snake, the two small hair thieves together may not be the opponent of the veteran.
Therefore, they could only engage in a cat-and-mouse-like desperate maneuver with the old man, creeping and sneaking, not daring to make a sound or even breathe.
I was wondering if the next episode would be the old man's success in hunting down two hidden thieves.
But the progress bar tells me it's not that simple, and it's too popcorn to do that.
Sure enough, after the two thieves escaped to the basement, the audience was stunned by the scene they saw:
Inside the dark basement, a woman was tied up and covered her mouth like a poor rabbit struggling madly on top of a bed, her eyes full of pleading and help.
As I mentioned earlier, in the process of watching this movie, the audience's empathy will constantly be reversed.
First of all, when the veteran easily solved the first thief, the strong soldier's combat effectiveness made my empathy turn from the veteran to the thief, because the confrontation between the two sides was not at one level at all.
The director of "Hold Your Breath" actually adopts a more special narrative method.
That is, the entire film is almost always a thief's perspective.
From a moral point of view, the widows and blind old people are vulnerable groups, the evening scene is already very desolate, even their money or savings have been handed down by thieves, should be spurned by thousands of people, they are not as good as beasts, they are bad people, in the words of the movie are villains, right?
But this movie is special in that the veteran is not an ordinary ordinary person, the habitual criminal encounters him, unexpectedly becomes the inferior side of the power confrontation, they are afraid and trembling, that is, the "weak", and the audience has always been very sympathetic to the vulnerable groups on the screen, so the director took them as the main perspective, and the process of trying to escape from the "magic cave" is the same as the process of being hunted down by the sound monster in "A Quiet Place".
And the veterans who are victims, after this perspective is reversed, become the frightening villain, the "monster".
Since the audience is substituted into the main perspective, when I saw the first thief killed, I hoped that the remaining two thieves would escape.
When they stumbled into the basement by mistake and discovered the terrible secret of the imprisoned woman, the empathy of "this old man turned out to be a pervert" and "you should run out and don't be caught" was even stronger.
But the reason for the high score of "Hold Your Breath" is that it is constantly reversed, continuously subverting the conscience of the audience.
After seeing the back, I learned that the woman who was imprisoned turned out to be the culprit who killed the old man's daughter. She was wealthy and saved her from jail with connections and a $300,000 in damages.
The bad guy didn't get the retribution and punishment he deserved, the old man lost his only loved one, he lived alone and in pain, so he went to the extreme and kidnapped the rich woman and asked her to bear offspring for her. (Of course, by way of a fertilized tube)
If the two thieves succeed in rescuing the imprisoned woman, the veteran is bound to go to jail, while the thief may abscond with a huge amount of money.
From the original point of view, the veteran is not a bad person, he just wants a relative to accompany him, and the intrusion of thieves once again destroys everything about the veteran, which makes people feel sympathetic.
After the release of "Hold Your Breath", it sparked a heated discussion, and the audience who watched it was divided into two factions:
1, support the blind veterans, severely punish female thieves;
2, the female thief is certainly guilty, but the veteran is not a good person, he should go to jail.
No matter which kind of ending, it will be sent by the audience to the blade and greet the family, the director and screenwriter are naturally very aware of this, so they adopt a more eclectic approach, that is, the ending is not dead, impartial.
Everyone has a ruler of conscience in their hearts, and it is the existence of this ruler that allows us to make the right choices when facing the right and wrong in life.
But what kind of "right choice" can be made in a situation like "Hold Your Breath"?
We always say that justice may be late but not absent, but in Western capitalist societies, is this really true forever?
Admittedly, this film nakedly reflects the reality that the poor have no right to appeal in front of the rich, the rich can use painless money to make themselves acquitted and continue to live happily, and the poor can only struggle and collapse at the bottom of the loss of the right to speak, and they are miserable and helpless.
When not everyone is equal before the law, dogs will jump the wall, and good men will be forced to go to Liangshan.
To put it bluntly, both the female thief and the blind veteran are guilty, and it is reasonable to say that both should go to jail, so the current ending values are wrong.
Don't worry, though.
It is said that due to the big sale of the first film, Sony has set up a sequel project, allowing director Federico Alvarez to start preparing for the sequel.
Therefore, how the two parties will end up is still difficult to determine.
"Hold Your Breath" is a relatively rare in recent years on the moral and order law of human ethics and order in another way to discuss the connotation of the connotation to the film, thriller, but not popcorn, stimulation, but not vulgar, criticizing social injustice, but also showing the sinister side of human nature.