Revisiting Surveillance and Exposure through Aging Masculinities: Fede Álvarez’s

Abstract

Fede Álvarez’s film Don’t Breathe (2016) and Poe’s classic tale ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ (1843) present a significant number of intertextualities, which pave the way for approaching Álvarez’s film as a contemporary adaptation of Poe’s tale. Both narratives comprise pervasive references to the gaze and the act of looking, methods of invigilation and disclosure, the house as a projection of its dweller, and the relevance that age and gender discourses acquire in them. This article offers a comparative analysis of both narratives with the view to prove that Álvarez’s film reflects and subverts the dynamics of surveillance and exposure displayed in Poe’s original tale.