Review of Don't Breathe (2016) by Spangle — 19 Jan 2017

Yet, Don't Breathe constantly feels like a short film with a paper thin concept stretched out over the course of a feature-length film. As the film kept going and the same cliched things kept happening, I sat and stared at my screen with similar pain as the kids in the house. I wanted out, but the movie just kept on going and going, never introducing any idea that was not filler or cliched in some fashion. Don't Breathe has some solid acting and a scary villain, but the concept is pretty lame especially when there are no tricks up its sleeves to add onto it. What you see is what you get for the most part and the portions it tacks on just feel like reaches that director Fede Alvarez added onto make the film longer and reach the hour and a half runtime. Simply put, this film is the very definition of tedious.

The tediousness predictability is constant and never lets go. The best sequence in the film - the basement sequence with all the lights off - is terrifically lit and really cool to watch unfold visually. Story-wise though, two of the would be robber teenagers who broke into a blind man's home just fondle the wall for a few minutes. As he fondles the wall right behind them, he is on his home turf and shows it, while the two teenagers are lost. Though well captured, the scene lacks in any sort of tension and serves as a microcosm of the whole film. When you anticipate a hand grabbing a character, guess what appears on the screen. These types of cliches are constantly adhered to throughout as Alvarez fails to find ways to obscure them. Instead, it just follows the beats on how to make a teenage, final girl, and home invasion horror thriller, while never innovating on them. Instead, it toes the line and cheapens its own scares by simply emulating the script put forth by better and more innovative horror films.

Even worse, Don't Breathe lacks guts. It fears killing its characters unlike any other horror film I have seen. It keeps them alive at all costs, in order to use them later on as a rescue for other characters. At the end of the day though, it is all done to lead up to a final girl who takes a stance against the big bad guy. The film even lacks innovation in its characterization as, at the end of the day, these are kids who perform robberies. They are robbing a blind veteran because they know he is sitting on a pile of cash. Unable to make the audience sympathetic to the leads otherwise, Alvarez adds in a subplot regarding the blind man with rape and impregnation that really feels cheesy and incredibly cheap. Thrown in just to demonize the blind man, he is clearly a bad guy, but it really adds no depth to the film. No tension, it merely just elongates it as finding the girl in the basement already made us root against him, no need to add on some perverse subplot.

The film continues to struggle, especially outside the house in and around the car. It just drags like all hell and it is supposed to be the thrilling finale. You know every beat of this scene if you seen any horror film ever released and it is really tiring to watch unfold. Ultimately, what I am driving at is that Don't Breathe entirely lacks atmosphere. At no point does director Fede Alvarez create an air of mystery or fear. Instead, it is just a largely dull film that mostly lacks sound to make up for any lack of atmosphere. It relies instead upon the silence of the room and of this blind man feeling his way around the room as the characters conveniently step on creaky floor boards.

Falling well below my expectations, Don't Breathe is an unscary, unthrilling, and thoroughly tedious teen horror film that only has its tight and well structured visuals in its pro column, as well as good acting. Every beat of the story is either done out of cliche or convenience to help move the story along in the predictable and tired fashion desired by Alvarez. For a film so highly praised by critics and audiences alike, it is fair to say that I expected far better than this film.