Durable home invasions plot serves as a showcase for director Fede Alvarez

Rating: 8/10 (3 June 2018)

A trio of burglars, Jane Levy, Dylan Minnette, and Daniel Zovatto, break into a blind veteran's remote home, the great Stephen Lang, to steal a recent large legal settlement. The young burglars get more than they planned for when they instead find themselves the trapped inside the home and stalked by Lange. The fact that Lang's character cannot see and the burglars cannot speak for fear he'll hear them and kill them makes it so a majority of the films done wordlessly and in complete silence. These sorts of movie set-ups are what I consider "pure cinema," telling a story on film that could not be told in another medium. Not as a book not as a comic, not as a play, or not in any other storytelling format. "Don't Breathe" builds suspense with visuals and sound in a way that would not transfer to another medium. Now the set-up is not all that clever or original (I supposed you could say it's "Wait Until Dark" turned on it's head), but director Fede Alvarez, who'd previously directed the surprisingly strong "Evil Dead" remake, builds tension like a master and has crafted a wicked little suspense thriller. In contrast to his "Evil Dead" remake, this film steers away from blood and gore and instead focuses on suspense, creating a situation where the audience can't help but ask themselves, what would they do in this situation? Credit for this also goes to a strong script co-written by Alvarez and Rodo Sayagues, which the best of these sorts of films have the characters have the characters take the logical actions the audience would do in that same situation. It's like the classic haunted house story question. Why don't the characters just leave? The script for "Don't Breath" does a great job of exhausting all of the logical options you'd think the burglars would do to try to escape (cell phones, guns, windows, door locks, basement exits, etc.). The story does seem to overly rely on horror movie tropes than I would have liked (torture, the-last-girl, night vision, etc..), but it's all done so well that horror movie aficionados won't care. Produced by Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert, with an fine score by Roque BaÃ±os, "Don't Breath" is a must see for horror fans!