vanessa’s review published on Letterboxd:
Don't Breathe went from a solid 4-star-movie to yikes within a few minutes.
I'm glad that I watched Don't Breathe now that the hype died down because if I had watched it back then I probably would have been disappointed even more because everyone seemed to love it so much but now that I've seen some bad reviews my expectations weren't that high anymore. That doesn't mean that I didn't have high expectations because as I mentioned in my Evil Dead review I really like Fede Alvarez as a director and was looking forward to an original movie.
For about the first half of the movie Letterboxd was right. This is a fantastic horror movie. I loved the idea of doing a reversed home invasion movie from the intruders point of view because you have to sympathise with them even though they are the bad guys. For most of the movie the villain isn't the villain. He's just an old blind guy who's trying to defend himself. If the movie had been from his point of view it would have been a regular home invasion movie, with only one difference - that he started the killing, which is somehow understandable.
But then the plot twist happened, and that's when I started to hate the movie. As soon as they found the woman the victim turned into the villain and as one of the characters said, when you compare to robbery to kidnapping they suddenly become the good guys. Was it really necessary to make him have a woman locked up in his basement and force her to have his child? Was it necessary to let him try to do the same with Jane Levy's character?
If it wasn't for the first half of the movie I would have rated Don't Breathe maybe 1 or 1 1½ stars but the first half saved the movie. The title is perfect because I held my breath for most of the time and I can't remember the last time I watched such a tense movie.
