Don't Breathe: Quick Review

Another year, another small horror movie that gets an insane amount of buzz. Just going to put it out there that I hope this trend doesn’t end for a long while, cause almost every film since Oculus that’s been under this “small indie horror darling” flag has been phenomenal. 


Don’t Breathe is the small isolated horror/thriller about a group of dirtbag kids who attempt a rob a blind man, who just turns out to be a violent (and slightly psychotic) war vet whose senses are just heightened enough to hear anyone in his nearest vicinity, and whose violent enough to murder anyone in his home. What follows is a tense, isolated thriller that does what many good horror movies do: focus on the dread and suspense of what is essentially a monster who knows you are in his domain. In this aspect, Don’t Breathe is great, the concept was more than enough to sell me, and there is a little bit more going on underneath the surface to make sure you don’t leave without a surprise or two. 

That being said, in execution, Don’t Breathe has the tendency to stumble a little bit. The first being that our main cast, while not annoying or grating, aren’t really as fleshed out as they could be, but for a movie like this I can give it a pass considering the opening scene does a fair job of establishing all we really need to know about them before we watch them try to survive. While on the subject, the opening scene does come off as a tad rushed, trying so hard to squeeze so much info in a small amount of time. “How can they burglarize so many homes?”, cause Guy 1’s dad works for a security company and steals master keys. “Why does Main Girl steal stuff?”, cause her parents are dirtbags and only wants a better life for her and her little sister away from them. It’s basic archetype stuff, but it’s enough to get the ball rolling, and Main Girl does come away feeling slightly more likeable than the average Friday the 13th character. That being said she is stealing from people in Detroit Michigan… so yeah it’s a grey area.  

The last thing that falters in terms of execution is 2 fold, our monster is a little OP, and doesn’t take full advantage of his move set. Call it breaking rules for plot convenience, but there are a few times during the film where The Blind Man (that’s his only name) just appears wherever he wants for the sake of scare, which would come off more cheap if I felt the film didn’t earn its jump scares. It’s annoying that a movie with such a great concept would fall into such an obvious cliche (Sam Raimi was on staff right?) but fortunate the more we learn about the Blind Man helps to fill in some gaps left by Point 2. Point 2 is purely an execution and design complaint. Our monster’s ability is essentially superhuman hearing and strength, and the movie pretty much uses the former as you would expect via a one minute brainstorming session. “Well he can hear really well, so how about he can hear our characters breathing?” “lets have a scene where he thinks he hears someone, and it’s real quiet, then a phone goes off and he unloads a clip into it.” Even the “lights out” scene shown in the trailer is pretty standard fare and pretty much relies on the presence of our actors and Stephen Lane’s intimidating performance as The Blind Man. Call it a nitpick, but having seen films like “They Look Like People” and “Dead Silence” with similar sound-design focused gimmicks, I couldn’t help but feel like some key action scenes in Don’t Breathe were just kind of bland. 

All that aside, despite stumbling Don’t Breathe is still a solid horror movie that survives based on a great premise and some great performances.  

7/10 - Pretty good, give it a watch.