Cheap and unpolished, still suspenseful and entertaining.

Rating: 6/10 (2 January 2019)

For honesty and coherence's sake I'll start off by saying I gave Don't Breathe a 6 out of 10. It's compelling, keeps you on edge and at times truly shocking without allowing itself to be pulled into anything too cliché. Pretty much all the makings of a decent modern Horror film not dealing with the supernatural, definitely achieving its initially set goals both story-wise and cinema-wise.
Having said that, the film is (in my humble opinion of course, feel more than free to disagree) quite frankly cheap and enjoyable despite it, not due to it. First, the cheap psychological trick of presenting the villains (no, they are NOT anti-heroes, simply a bunch of misfit delinquents forming a street gang of egotistical spoiled brats) as the protagonists from the exposition to the very end. Three jerks who decide to break into a war veteran and bereaved father in order to rob him of his settlement funds (his sole livelihood), and the audience is coerced into sympathizing with them on account of the female coming from a messed up home with an abusing mother and the male being a slightly dorky "good guy" in love with her. The screen time they are given achieved the effect of making us (or me at least) secretly (or not quite so) root for them despite them being the obvious bad guys from the get go.
Second, the fear and shock factors are as cheap as they come. Jump scares as the only truly "frightening" feature. Dark secrets revealed which flip the script and imply that there are no good guys in this film (so much for the film avoiding clichés). And my favorite - the "antagonist" (again, a 50+ year old veteran protecting his house and wealth from a bunch of no good would be burglars) being a hybrid of Superman and God, easily able to overpower a youngster half his age and twice his size, survive two hammer swings hitting him straight on the back of the head and escape handcuffs. Perhaps this was a supernatural Horror film after all.
Third, the sheer stupidity of certain scenes for the sake of the plot instead of choosing one of a million other more authentic and realistic options. Like the war veteran suddenly losing his accuracy and missing the kid he tries stabbing with garden shears when he's literally on top of him, moments after he was able to track said kid using his hearing alone and hit him with a pistol bullet form the other end of the hall. The bullet of course didn't kill the kid, as that would have made far too much sense. That's not just foolish, it's cheating.
Yes, the film is fun to watch even if you aren't able to ignore all those blunt shortcomings. It's suspenseful and keeps you guessing and hoping. Some scenes are truly shocking regardless of being cheap and overall result is definitely worth watching. Just please don't be fooled by the relatively high score Don't Breathe has received here on IMDB (yes, that's pretty high, people here get a kick out of trashing excellent Horror films) and don't expect 2016's Horror masterpiece. Aside from the great acting nothing about this film should have been as it was, and it wouldn't have been all that challenging to make it better or at least less cheap.