Don't Breathe

The hunted becomes the hunter.

“Don’t Breathe” is an upcoming August 2016 thriller/horror film of previous SXSW film festival fame, and is directed by newcomer Fede Alvarez; it follows 3 teenagers as they attempt to rob a rich, seemingly-innocent blind man’s home, only to find out that there’s much more going on than what initially appears.

Right off the bat (ignoring the ridiculous 5-second trailer for the trailer), I was hit with something I did not expect: two sides of the same coin. Usually with films like these, the robbers are shown as deadbeats only interested in the money, and the victim is the only one who is hinted to be innocent; with this, however, we see why the heist is taking place in the first place. Sure, the other two thieves might not get as much development as the (currently) unnamed girl, but there’s still some reasoning to be had there.

For the blind man, though, the trailer does at least one undeniable thing right: it shows that, this time, he’s the villain. It’s interesting to note that, at first, two of the thieves seem rather reluctant and guilty to be robbing a blind man (which I hope the film explores more), but, as the film goes on, they’ll definitely have to shed that pre-determined opinion to save their own lives.

What else is there to be said? It looks promising enough: in between interesting character developments and (hopefully) intelligent scares, “Don’t Breathe” is shaping up to be one of this year’s most smartly-written horror developments.

7/10- With plenty of room to explore its potentially interesting characters, “Don’t Breathe” could just very well be one of this year’s smartest horror films yet.