Intense, Thinking Person's Thriller

Rating: 9/10 (27 August 2016)

There is so much to be said about this movie, more than I can say within the confines of the word limit. I am a lifelong die-hard thriller and horror fan, and this one ranks in my top 5. This is a very intense, morally complex, thinking person's thriller/horror. It takes it's time in building up with looming suspense, and then once the terror begins, it is unrelenting until the very end. This is a unique scary movie, in that for the longest time, it's very hard to know who, if anybody, to root for. Both sides have their sympathetic qualities, and both have their deeply sinister sides. The movie takes place in poverty-ravaged Detroit. The plot centers around three friends who are career criminals trying to get out of dodge, robbing houses for a living. The girl comes from an abusive, dysfunctional home, and wants more than anything to rescue her little sister from this environment, and establish a better life for them in California. They get a tip that there is house nearby whose owner is sitting on $300K in cash. They stake out the place and discover that it looks to be the perfect isolated target, in a ghost town of a neighborhood. They discover that the occupant is a blind veteran, who got the money in a settlement after his only daughter was killed in a car crash. Really messed up to rob such a person, right? But as one of the robbers points out, his misfortunes don't necessarily make him a saint. Upon breaking into the house, things go horribly wrong for this trio, and they find themselves trapped in the house with a person they grossly underestimated as an easy target. The sheer terror written on their faces throughout the movie is incredibly realistic. Ultimately, both sides lose something and gain something from the horrific ordeal. The ending was surprising and very satisfying. I'm downgrading it one star due to the revolting and completely unnecessary turkey baster scene. The whole wanting to make a baby factor was truly not needed, and distracted from an otherwise great plot. That aside, this was a nearly perfect film.