We’ll have a full review of the new Fede Alvarez horror thriller, Don’t Breathe, up soon (Bloody Disgusting’s description of the movie as “Hitchcock on crack” is a great start). But in the aftermath of its SXSW 2016 screening there’s one monster on my mind.
Remember Resident Evil 4’s Garrador? Blind and vicious, the garrador had monstrous claws and keen hearing. In one of the most tense survival horror video games of all time—brimming with evil priests, masked chainsaw maniacs and tentacled parasites—the blind Garrador stood out.
El garrador pic.twitter.com/krSNVKmEw2
— resident evil 4 (@ResidentPs2) December 21, 2014
Confrontations with a garrador were some of Resident Evil 4 ’s most intense battles. He moved fast and could exploit even the slightest weakness.
Stephen Lang (Avatar, Conan the Barbarian) in Don’t Breathe is one of the first onscreen monsters to capture that same sensation of shock, awe and overwhelming fear that accompanied our first Resident Evil 4 garrador encounter. That he’s a mere man doesn’t shrink his monstrous stature by even an inch.
In Don’t Breathe Stephen Lang plays a veteran blinded in the Iraq War. When three poor Detroit kids try and rob his house, he demonstrates a terrifying and violent efficiency at stomping the would-be robbers into bruised dust.
Deploying all senses, Lang can shoot, hunt, and decimate with the best of Las Plagas undead.
Don’t Breathe doesn’t have a release date yet, but it looks like 2016 will bring to screens a horror experience worthy of video games’ most chilling blind monstrosity.
