Don’t think.

While there are less direct discrepancies in the script for Don’t Breathe than its detractors shake their fingers at – even if they’re only covered up by one line or a particular shot it’s at least showing awareness of the potential gaps – it’s undeniably the type of movie that’s urging you to shut down for a bit and give over to the fight or flight surges our leads must be feeling.  And it comes very close to doing that successfully for its full runtime.

DB is, to nab some description’s from BC’s review, a reverse home invasion flick, sort of a nastier reimagining of People Under the Stairs from, fittingly, the dude that gave us a nastier reimagining of Evil Dead, Fede Alvarez.  And in this case, ‘nastier’ doesn’t particularly mean its more mean-spirited or violent – in fact, one of the appreciated positives about Dont Breathe, and a huge one, is how it manages to satiate a horror blood and guts quota without sinking into torture porn – rather that Fede seems fully aware of his genre and has made sure his film(s) remain on the progressive edge with style, tone, and visuals.  With ED that definitely meant going for many hilarious gross-out gore gags (similar to what the fantastic Ash vs Evil Dead TV show is doing now); with Don’t Breathe, that means perpetually keeping a little bit of gas in the tank so he can keep revving the engine bit by bit, louder and louder, as the clock ticks on.

Rocky (Jane Levy), Money (Daniel Zovatto), and Alex (Dylan Minette) are three ageless semi-smart delinquents who’ve developed a system for breaking into houses to steal and pawn some goods.  Film shorthand shows us that this system is actually Alex’s, who’s ‘the smart one’ with a dumb-as-rocks (womp) horror-trope crush on Rocky, and who drops facts about what they should or shouldn’t do to get away from their thefts cleanly.  Money is the horror-trope killer-fodder, unsurprisingly dating Rocky, and also unsurprisingly – spoiler, but duh – the first to die.  And Rocky is the girl, with a ladybug tattoo, and all the genericness that clipped summary suggests.  Obviously the characters, ever one of horror’s weak spots, are pretty weak here as well.  To the script and actors’ credits, though, everyone (Money included) gets to add a bit more nuance to their personalities than their exteriors might suggest, but the only one we really get any justification for her actions is Rocky, and because of that isolation, it feels spectacularly forced, akin to the character pausing mid-tale to tell you a sob story, which she does as well.

But again, although rounding out these roles might’ve benefited the story, they’re not really the focus – the thrills are.  The trio chooses “one final score” (of course), a blind man’s house, thought to contain some big-cash-settlement treasures, and discovers that said blind man – played with delightfully on-edge creepiness by Stephen Lang – is much more apt at protecting his goods than suspected, and maybe is hiding something as well.  (…Regarding which it’s better if, like me, you haven’t watched the trailers, which stupidly spoil this.)

So after about twenty or so minutes of build-up, cue enraged blind man, ably brandishing weapons he has stashed about his house, while the three robbers sneak about, sweating over every creaky floorboard and stifled sneeze.  Also: There’s an angry dog.

This part of Don’t Breathe is such a blast, with Fede continually tossing in little details that ground us in the atmosphere and make the closeted chase intensify with every slim escape.  Lang’s blind man powers sort of come and go, but they’re played with at the same tune as the pace, which lends the in-movie credulity of senses heightened when we’re on alert.  And that frikkin dog made me laugh once or twice with its relentless pursuits, capable – shall we hint – of going where Lang cannot.

Fede and co-scriptwriter Rodo Sayagues withhold some nicely twisted explanations for later on, Alvarez going ahead and divulging into some appropriate gross-out aspects at just this point.  But to the violence – as mentioned, it’s well-restrained.  Not only does this show deference to this being a thriller and not a straight out horror flick, but it allows the shots to do some clever bluffs later, which would have been more obvious if they’d cut away from gore to which we’d already been inundated.

The film’s cold-open oddly ruins part of the last sequence, and despite it not being as holey as some would suggest, Don’t Breathe is still riddled with How?s.  But I didn’t much care.  The actors mostly overcame their stereotypes, Lang is frighteningly convincing in his role, the atmosphere is masterfully maintained through lighting, choreography and music, and most importantly: I wasn’t given cause to stop and think about those Hows during the bulk of the flick; I was seduced into fight or flight along with the characters.  I’d say that was the main mission, and it was accomplished.