Stylishly directed horror thriller with great premise, great bad guy, great final girl, and several extremely suspenseful sequences (it even finds a fresh way to do a night vision scene). Yet while it's a step above the average horror film, it keeps getting tripped up by its lame duck script, which fails equally in creating likable characters and sticking to its own internal logic.

Then there's the big twist, which I have to somewhat admire for the trashy ballsiness of it, even as it signals that there isn't really anything going on here beyond the desire to shock an audience at any cost.

I also found it somewhat telling that the best scene in the film (and the one that most recalls the style of producer Sam Raimi) is one involving a girl, a car, and a dog -- i.e. a sequence that has nothing to do with the film's juicy "home invasion of a resourceful blind man" premise. Plus, the Detroit as-urban-hellhole setting just recalls IT FOLLOWS, a comparison that does DON'T BREATHE few favors.