Don't Breathe 2016 - REVIEW (By Glen Peddle)

Hello twisted ones. I have come here to Twisted Central to chew bubblegum and talk about the new Fede Alvarez feature, Don’t Breathe. And as you have probably guessed, I did indeed run out of bubblegum.

I had seen the trailer about a month before the movie’s release, and while it seemed promising, the real reason I wanted to go and watch it was because of Jane Levy. She was the highlight of the Evil Dead remake for me, and I knew I’d be following her career afterwards.

So here’s the plot in brief. Rocky (Jane Levy), her boyfriend Money (Daniel Zovatto) and friend Alex (Dylan Minnette) have been breaking into selected homes around Detroit to make some money and, in the case of Rocky and Money, leave the city behind and head to California. They learn of a Vietnam vet (Stephen Lang) who is sitting on a pile of money after a settlement involving the death of his daughter. Add to that the fact that he’s blind, and it seems like too big an opportunity to pass up. As you can imagine, things don’t go quite as planned.

Apparently, Don’t Breathe was Fede Alvarez’s response to criticism of his Evil Dead remake being an overly gory shockfest. And while I tend to find such criticisms bothersome, this time they were used constructively. Don’t Breathe is a well-acted, tension filled ride that, once the three thieves enter the house, doesn’t let up. There are some jump scares sprinkled throughout, and a couple of them are pretty cheap, but the rest are at least relevant to what’s going on in the main story.

There were some minor nitpicks that, in the grand scheme of things, didn’t ruin the movie, but kind of made me figuratively scratch my head. For one thing, the blind man not immediately hearing the noises the thieves were making sort of surprised me. Granted, he had a television playing in his bedroom, and his house is locked and barred exceptionally well. But assuming that his other senses were heightened due to blindness, and that he should be very paranoid considering the secret he’s keeping in the house, you’d think he’d be a somewhat lighter sleeper and more alert to any noises. 

Also, it was kind of hard for me to root for anyone in this. Rocky is the one you want to win the day as far as her motivations go, but in the end she is still a criminal who will even rob from the blind. So I was kind of torn there. I even felt a little sympathy for the blind man. I obviously can’t condone his actions, but the reason he became the way he is sad and it’s easy to believe that a person could turn out the way he did.

You have to suspend disbelief in some regards to things that happen, like the previously mentioned noises made that the bling man didn’t immediately catch, the fact that he just happened to have a perfectly cut board for the one unprotected window used to break into the house, a chloroform bomb that Money used not working, and the blind man’s sense of smell working and not working at times only convenient to the plot, just to name some examples.

But as I already mentioned, these nitpicks overall didn’t affect my enjoyment of this film. If you want to spend the better part of 90 minutes sitting on the edge of your seat, then Don’t Breathe is the way to do it. It gets an easy 4 out of 5 stars from me. Go see it if you haven’t already.