Don't Hold Your Breath

Rating: 4/10 (5 September 2016)

Don't Breathe is a film with one of the most interesting premises I've heard recently. A trio of small time thieves, Rocky, Alex and Money (I didn't come up with these names. Don't look at me) try to burgle an old blind man's house on the chance that he's keeping his inherited 300000$ hoarded somewhere inside. The Blind Guy is not entirely hospitable to the thieves who tried to gas and rob him and he quickly is revealed to be something out of a Quentin Tarantino movie. The trailer looked absolutely riveting, a surefire 1.5 hours of thrilling suspense. As it turns out though, Don't Breathe is as suspenseful as a piece of soggy bread.
Don't Breathe tries to create moments of tension and suspense and they work at times, very occasionally. But sadly the best moments, like the minor "plot twist" and a death scene, were revealed in the trailer. It's just another example of trailers showing too much too soon, much to the expense of the quality and effectiveness of the movie itself. Scenes that could have amounted to genuine nail- biting-edge-of-the-seat trembling were further dampened by the absolute idiocy of our three main leads. Rocky (Jane Levy) is given the most clichéd backstory you can think of. Money (Daniel Zovatto) tries to have a cool ghetto backstory but he's as ghetto as Iggy Azalea. And Alex (Dylan Minette) despite seeming like a well off kid likes to go around breaking and entering into houses with Rocky and Money. It's like the writers were trying to say, "They don't actually STEAL and don't use weapons. Now EMPATHIZE" But who are the bad guys in this movie? The blind guy? The lead characters? Their parents for naming them things like Rocky and Money? The only backstory that would have made sense for these three would have been a shot of them getting dropped as infants because they're about as smart as the three stooges, if not less. It's especially baffling since it seemed that they were meant to be complex and interesting characters. There's also an unnecessarily ridiculous subplot that involves a love triangle even though you don't even realize Rocky and Money are dating until it's too late to even matter.
Other minor but unignorable faults with the movie include the fact that no neighbors, no cars and no pedestrians seem to surround the area who could hear regularly recurring screams or loud gunshots. The thieves keep screaming out each other's names in front of the guy they're robbing. The blind guy despite having heightened senses (even olfactory) can't feel people nearly bump into him or feel their scared tingly twitchy sweaty presence. And out of all my eye rolls, the ending made me roll my eyes the hardest.
On the plus side, the film is visually interesting. It doesn't feel too cramped or visually boring despite majority of it taking place in the same house. The actors actually do a really great job, especially Jane Levy who gave a really convincing performance. Stephen Lang is creepy and intimidating (and strangely attractive) as a psychotic blind man (he's actually officially just The Blind Man) The premise is interesting and original and they did manage to wring out some decent substance.
Sadly the bad outweighs the good and we're left with a film in which the main characters self-sabotage their own survival by making the worst decisions possible. Maybe they have issues because their parents named them things like Rocky and Money. My advice: Don't watch the trailer. Don't expect smart characters. Don't hold your breath.