Fede Alvarez and Rodo Sayagues Interview: Don’t Breathe 2

Fede Alvarez & Rodo Sayagues, the duo behind Don’t Breathe 2, talk about the journey of the Blind Man & the challenges of being a first-time director.

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Don’t Breathe 2 finally arrives in theaters on August 13, half a decade after the original made its mark on the thriller genre. The incredible creative team of Fede Alvarez and Rodo Sayagues (who also collaborated on Evil Dead) have returned to tell more of Norman’s [Stephen Lang] story – only this time Sayagues is in the director’s chair for the first time.

The dynamic duo sat down with Screen Rant to preview the Blind Man’s journey in the intervening years and the father-daughter relationship at the heart of the film.

Screen Rant: What has Norman been up to in the last eight years since the first movie?

Fede Alvarez: He left the house. People watch the movie and think it’s the same house, but it’s a different house. It kind of looks familiar, because it’s the same city – and the houses in Detroit, and after having scouted many, have a certain landscape that is quite similar. But it’s a different house from the first movie. He’s probably already, just in case, preemptively leaving that house and all the secrets that he left behind.

Ironically, the story is gonna be about those secrets [catching] up to him. But I think he’s been trying to get away from humanity even more. He has moved to an even more empty area of Detroit, even more outside the city; the empty city that is the center of Detroit. He is trying to keep to himself and do his thing. He did landscaping – as you see, he grows plants and sells them.

But something happened, some years ago that in his life, that changed drastically. And when we find him in the story, he’s raising a young child. He’s kind of back full circle, in a way. He’s back to where he was a few years before the first movie started, being a happy father that’s raising the kid and trying to take care of her.

We get introduced to Phoenix [Madelyn Grace], an 11-year-old girl who Norman takes in as his own. Can you talk to me about their relationship and his parenting style?

Rodo Sayagues: Well, yeah. It’s what you would refer to as tough love. It’s a father that wants to keep his child at home and doesn’t want the child to grow, in a way. A metaphor that we used to play with during the shooting is that she’s kind of like a bonsai tree. All the time, what you’re doing is trimming it down so that it doesn’t grow because you want it to always be a little puppy.

But that causes a lot of pain. So, what’s happening is we meet Norman and Phoenix at a point where Phoenix can’t take it anymore. She just wants to go out and explore and meet people and just grow. It’s inevitable. Life expands and grows, and there’s nothing that you can do about it. And then that creates a conflict between them because Norman feels that that is a threat because he’s afraid that he’s going to lose her.

Fede Alvarez: It’s hard to tell that guy, “Hey, don’t worry. Relax,” after he already lost a daughter. His daughter died right before the first story started, so how do you convince that guy to chill a little bit? Particularly when, 20 minutes into the movie, some bad guys come into the house to try to take her.

Rodo, you get to step into the director’s chair in this film. Can you talk to me about some of the challenges you faced shooting in a pandemic and stepping into the director’s role this time around?

Rodo Sayagues: Well, it was a privilege to be able to do this; to make my debut as a director with a movie that we wrote together and we created together. It felt so familiar already that it didn’t feel weird to me at all to be there.

Of course, then, there’s a lot of challenges and a huge responsibility. Because you’re there and you’ve got to make sure that this works and that you are able to manifest this into reality, so that we can share it with the rest of the world – and that it’s up to our expectations and Fede’s expectations as a writer and producer as well.

Yeah, it is challenging, but it was a lot of fun. We made sure to surround ourselves with a great team that worked on the first movie, and they helped so much. They made it not easy, but they made it flow in a very gentle and organic manner.

The pandemic had pros and cons. There’s, of course, all the hurdles that we need to get over: testing every day and all the safety protocols that made the logistics of the shooting more complicated. But then there was a good side to it, which is that there were no visitors allowed on set. No one was allowed to go on vacation during the weekends or anything, so everybody was very much focused on what we needed to do. In those terms, it actually was beneficial for that.

Fede Alvarez: By the way, we decided he would make the movie before the pandemic. Do they think that when I saw the pandemic, I was like, “You take this, Rodo. I’m just going to stay home?” But no, it was a decision made the year before.

Rodo Sayagues: Actually, we started prepping the movie before the pandemic. And then COVID hit, and we had to shut down prep, went back home, and then came back a couple of months later to finish the job that was happening.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/fede-alvarez-and-rodo-sayagues-dont-breath-2/