"Don't Breathe"- A wickedly intense and highly entertaining thriller that delivers the goods despite faltering a bit in the third act.

Rating: 8/10 (9 September 2016)

Well... that was intense.
"Don't Breathe" is the brainchild of director Fede Alvarez, who along with his writing partner Rodo Sayagues has crafted one of the more inventive and exciting thrillers of the year, mixing a wonderful sense of all-encompassing paranoia and claustrophobia with a surprisingly dense sense of internal debate about the moral dubiousness of the events taking place. It's a film that has quite a bit going for it, and it has a lot more depth to it than I think many will admit or even accept.
We follow a young group of thieves who are attempting to rob just enough houses to get the money to escape their dreary, going-nowhere lives in Detroit. Chief among them is "Rocky" (Jane Levy), who is desperate to escape her abusive family and give her kid-sister a better life that their current situation just cannot afford them. Along with her friends "Money" (Daniel Zovatto) and Alex (Dylan Minnette), she takes on the classic "one last job"- in this case, robbing the house of an elderly blind veteran (Stephen Lang of "Avatar" fame) who is allegedly sitting on $300k in cash... a payoff from the family of a young, rich girl who accidentally killed his daughter in a car accident some time prior.
However, despite his visual impairment, it soon becomes aware that the blind man may not be quite as handicapped as the group has believed. And soon enough, the group will be forced into a life-or- death struggle against this tremendous force of nature that will stop at nothing to protect his home and the strange secret that lurks inside of the locked basement...
The strengths of the film really lie in the top-notch sense of suspense that director Alvarez relishes in piling on scene-after- scene, and for the shockingly complex questioning of the morality of the events occurring.
Alvarez- best known for helming the under-appreciated "Evil Dead" reboot from 2013- is at the top of his game. His slick sense of composition and movement constantly has you at the edge of your seat, and you'll often literally find yourself holding your breath in dread and anticipation, much as the film's title implores you. Often, I found myself wowed by just how solid his work is here- with camera-work and expert editing that borders on Hitchcockian at times, giving it a near-classical feeling. Bravo, sir. Bravo.
I also was quite taken by how complex the film can be when it tries. While it mainly remains as subtext, there's a constant lingering question at the back of your mind... questioning just who the true villain (or even villains) are given the complex nature of the storyline. Or even if there are any traditional "heroes" or "villains" in this story? After all, our "protagonists" are basically career criminals who are trying to steal from a blind man... At what point does sympathy for someone come or go? At what point does breaking the law become acceptable? And can two wrongs really make a right? Questions like these will be bouncing around in your mind as the film continues through it's varied (and unpredictable) twists and turns. And it added a lot to the experience for me.
And to top it off, the performances are just a ton of fun. Lang steals the show as our antagonist, with minimal lines and an almost purely physical performance that generates sympathy at first before becoming a shocking threat. Levy is likable and really gives her character a sense of pathos, and you identify with her reasoning for doing what she is doing despite condemning it at the same time. Zovatto is a great deal of fun as a bit of a wannabe thug with a chip on his shoulder. And Minnette is a great, sympathetic figure, being the only one of the group who really questions what they're doing.
All that praise being said, I do have to take off a few points for the one major fault of the film- and that is that it does falter quite a bit in the third act. I can't really go into it here without spoiling anything (which I refuse to do), but suffice to say, the film takes a few hard-left turns with twists that are interesting but contrived, and the climax is extremely disjointed. A few key moments almost took me out of the movie completely. But thankfully the first two acts are so enthralling and engrossing, that I could forgive a decidedly mixed- bag climax.
All-in-all, "Don't Breathe" is a satisfying and chilling suspense- thriller. It may not be perfect, and it nearly falls apart in the end, but a masterful first and second act, top-notch performances and incredible direction more than make up for this.
I give it a very good 8 out of 10. Head on down to the theater, sit back, and get ready to be scared!