Adjust Your Tracking is back and ready to put the nail in the coffin of 2016 summer movies. With that in mind, I’m joined as usual by co-host Joe von Appen to discuss two recent additions to the ever-growing subgenre of horror titles that specifically use Detroit as a setting: newly minted box office hit “Don’t Breathe” and already obscure VOD title “Antibirth.” We also find potential parallels from the terrible recent events in that city to that of Hollywood’s recent output. We’re here to say: film is not dead. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have concerns.
READ MORE: ‘Don’t Breathe Is A Well Crafted, But Hollow Genre Exercise
“Don’t Breathe” is director Fede Alvarez‘ followup to his breakout first feature, the actually quite good remake of “Evil Dead” (which we debated earlier this year on our sister show, Over/Under Movies). On the surface, it’s a simple home invasion movie in which three young thugs break into a blind man’s house (the last resident left in a desolate Detroit neighborhood) in hopes of nabbing a big payday, yet things go from bad to worse in a hurry when they all get more than they expected and sympathies switch back and forth. “Antibirth” is the debut feature from Danny Perez, whose work until now has mostly been in music videos and more extensive projects with Animal Collective. It also uses the Detroit setting as an added layer to comment on its messed up story of a hard-partying woman (Natasha Lyonne) who goes through the most disturbing, grossly funny immaculate conception ever witnessed in cinema.
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