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Don't Breathe (2016)

Rate: 3
Viewed: 1/26

Breathe
1/26: Criminals break into a rundown house, the resident turns out to be dangerous, a Rottweiler is let loose on the criminals, and there's somebody with a mysterious past inside...let me guess: The People Under the Stairs?

I won't go so far as to say Don't Breathe is a complete rip-off. Since the three leads breaking into the house are criminal, the first question must be asked: "Why do I have to care about them?" That's pretty much the end of the movie. It's comical when the filmmakers barely put any effort into building up the aforementioned characters at the beginning.

Stephen Lang as the blind superman made me laugh so much. He was the asshole reporter in Manhunter and got killed so badly by Francis Dollarhyde. In fact, if they met again today, Stephen Lang still wouldn't be able to overcome Tom Noonan. That's how weak he was all throughout his Hollywood career as a nobody. It would be equivalent to Jon Cryer trying to take on Steven Seagal. As a matter of fact, Stephen Lang got dispatched by him quite easily in Fire Down Below.

Okay, the capabilities of a blind man...just because one sense is missing, it still doesn't enhance the rest. But one thing is for sure: a smoker can be discerned by scent alone. When the girl was in the same room with the blind man, he would've known automatically, no matter how much she could hold her breath.

Chlo bomb? Never heard of it. Therefore, the question of why it didn't work as expected can be safely skipped. How about the girl going through a vent? Wake me up if there's one in a regular-sized house that can actually fit her body. Remember the stupid basement scene when the blind man cut a hole in her pants? It's good as new when she went over the seats in the car to work something out with the trunk in order to trick the Rottweiler.

I encourage you...yes, you the reader...to ask somebody very muscular to beat you on the head repeatedly. Let me know if you can stand up and be able to think clearly minutes afterwards. Also, check yourself out in the mirror to see whether or not there are a couple of simple bruises here and there. Most likely, your face will have suffered a complete meltdown along with intracranial hemorrhage and broken teeth.

No matter how many times somebody has been beaten up, even to the point of being rendered incapacitated, he or she manages to come back full of spit and vinegar for another round. How about the blind man making it impossible for anyone to escape the house yet his dog is able to come inside? At the end, he's handcuffed and chained to the wall in the basement but comes out shooting at the girl on the first floor?

I hate the scene when lights were turned off in the basement and it's switched to night vision. That'll require some thinking to make this one work on the cinematic level. Back to the stupid part when the blind man cut a hole in the girl's pants, how will he keep his semen alive? It usually lasts up to an hour; otherwise, he'll need something that can reach minus 320 degrees Fahrenheit, and freezers nowadays can only do minus 9 degrees Fahrenheit at most.

All in all, Don't Breathe is too dumb to be taken seriously, has awful camera work, contains no characters to root for, and steals well-known elements from films like The People Under the Stairs, The Silence of the Lambs, and Cujo.