Review of Don't Breathe (2016) by Olivier B — 22 Oct 2016

With a title like DON'T BREATHE, you know you're in for something pretty frightening. But does the film live up to what the title foreshadows? Well, let's take a look.

For one thing, I love the concept. It's very simple, yet very original. We focus on a group of thieves who are planning on breaking into a blind man's home to steal a huge amount of money that he was given. The rest of the movie becomes an extremely suspenseful sequence of this blind man trying to find these thieves, and when he does find them... he will kill them. That is such a great idea for a movie and it's the reason why I wanted to see it.

If you haven't seen this film yet, I'm hoping that you didn't watch the trailers because they gave away literally the entire first half of the movie. And for that, I predicted when the scares were going to happen, and who was going to die. They could've have just showed the thieves break into the house and the blind guy suddenly shows up. That would still leave the audience get the basic premise of the film without giving too much away. It's not the movie's fault, but I really wish the marketers could've shown a much more subtle preview and I would've had a much better first viewing experience. Which is why I warn you to not watch the trailer before seeing this movie.

Anyway, what I also love about the movie is how it mostly avoids those annoying and useless horror movie tropes that I absolutely cannot stand. For instance, most horror movies only rely on jump scares to frighten the audience. But really, it's just loud and sudden noise along with a quick crescendo in the music, and it's usually just someone touching someone else's shoulder or a character quickly turning back and it's nothing. I hate that! It's not scary, it's just startling. But in this film, it relies mostly on suspense, which creates a lot of tension in the situation the characters are in, and it leaves the audience constantly on the edge of their seats not knowing what's going to happen. And another thing that most horror movies have is this very stereotypical, one-dimensional girl character who is always completely oblivious to what's around her and too dumb to get herself out of a silly situation. But here, the girl character actually has some development. Her motivations for helping steal the money are reasonable. And she's smart, she knows she's in a serious situation and is trying to do everything she can to get herself out of it while also trying to get what she came for.

The last half is where things really start to pick up. At this point, I had no idea what's going to happen. They give us an incredibly suspenseful sequence in a pitch-black basement where the characters can't see where they're going fearing that they might bump into the blind man. It was also extremely quiet, which adds a lot more tension to the scene, and it left me holding my breath through the whole thing. You'd probably think at this point the rest of the movie would play out like this. But then the blind man gives the other characters an explanation of why he is willing to kill whoever trespasses his property, and it makes him seem even more of a villain. It's at this point where you want this guy dead! You root for the girl character to find her way out of the situation. And just to add something, the climax contains one of the most horrifically disgusting moments I've ever seen in a movie. You'd know what I'm talking about if you seen the movie, the entire audience screamed in disgust.

In regards to problems, the film doesn't have that much to offer. In spite of its unique concept, it's also very simple. I would've liked to see a little more of what they could've done with it, especially since half of the story was given away in the trailer. Also, I really did not like how the movie ended. It felt like an alternative ending scene that had been scrapped out in post-production, but then decided to just put it back in to set up a sequel. It was rushed, unnecessary, felt completely out of place, and kind of went against everything I thought the movie was going for.

With all that said, the movie doesn't offer anything absolutely spectacular like I kind of wanted it to, but I don't think it was trying to be. If they were to cut out the ending, I probably would've loved this movie. Overall, DON'T BREATHE was a very enjoyable and intense thriller with a great concept, some good characters and some pretty great acting, which is honestly pretty rare nowadays for scary movies. If you love horror or thriller movies, this is a must see. If not, I'd still recommend it. It all depends how much you can tolerate being scared.

Grade: B+.