Set in Detroit, Hollywood's favorite stage for a depressed, rundown city, the film follows 3 young adults (Jane Levy, Dylan Minette and Daniel Zovato) who break into people's houses, although they never take more than $10k to avoid grand larceny charges. However, faced with the opportunity to score at least six figures, they take on an old blind man (Steven Lang) who is sitting on a huge court settlement. Easy right? Well, of course the Blind Man is not what he seems.
Directed by Fede Alvarez, who helmed the Evil Dead remake a couple years ago, the film is extremely effective at laying out the confined space of the house and peril that the young characters find themselves in. The film also establishes a great moral conundrum for the audience; root for the robbers, who have noble if misguided goals (get out of their shitty situation), or the Blind Man, seemingly innocent and defenseless.
It's a great quandary, until about midway through the movie when a shift happens that I won't spoil that definitively places the Blind Man into the monster category. I suppose that's the price we must pay for such a tense film; you need to be rooting for someone, and the initial setup left who the actual heroes were too ambiguous.
Which is fine. These movies need some sort of definitive villain I guess. The movie lays out tense scenario after tense scenario, and just when you think it's over it keeps going. The Blind Man is a sometimes inconsistent monster, at one moment able to sense exactly where a character is in the room, at another oblivious to anyone's presence.
Don't Breathe is fairly schlocky, and it's the kind that goes to depraved places you will not be able to anticipate. Equal parts thriller and horror, it's an example of an effective genre film. I enjoyed the ride, but I'm not sure I'm ready to do it again anytime soon.
