Almost perfect. Undoubtedly tense as hell!

Rating: 9/10 (11 September 2016)

Picture the scene: the production house logos have just passed, and we cut to an aerial shot of Detroit of our villain - Norman, 'The Blind Man' as played by Stephen Lang - dragging a bloody girl down the street, constantly zooming down, soundtrack buzzing, scary as hell. And it doesn't really let up until the end.
The movie's 4 main cast are great, the only annoying one being Money who is the guy who plans everything and is a total dick about it, but he gets killed fairly soon so I can easily forget about it, and it was well acted so yes. The Blind Man, who it turns out is absolutely nowhere near as helpless as he first appeared, is easily one of the best villains of the year. He's got the right look, of an old man but stupidly well built for it, grizzled and intimidating as hell, great performance here. The two, Suburgatory's Jane Levy, who is very different person here and not least because of her blonde hair, makes for a character who is morally dubious but I still want to support, and the same can be said for Alex Minnette's character also called Alex.
This movie's biggest strength is that is, at first, knows it's limits. The weak villain makes him real, and so when Rocky (Levy) and Alex are running from him, it gives them even grounding to an extent and the scares have more effect, and in the part in the trailer where the lights are turned off in the basement and he chases them with a gun in the dark, it's impossibly tense. Literally, in a large amount of this film I was holding my breath. There was also a surprising lack of jump scares, or when they were, it was the arrival of something dangerous i.e the Blind Man or his vicious dog. The sound design of the film was really great; how the sound was heightened really gave a feeling of how 'loud' they are.
The thing that keeps the movie from being a 10 from me, is that in the final 7-15 minutes, it feels like a part that should've stayed in the first draft of the script. Don't get me wrong, it does result in two great action set pieces, but it goes past a point where it does raise a good moral quandary of "who's the real bad guy here?" and becomes a bit over blown and this is enforced by a bizarre bit of sequel baiting that felt odd. If you like it, fine, and it certainly didn't kill this competent and tense as hell thriller masterclass. So yes, certainly one of the best horror thrillers this year, go see Don't Breathe!