DON’T BREATHE (2016) starts off as a refreshing thriller, a horror movie free from the usual horror movie tropes, but it doesn’t stay this way for long.  Ultimately it turns into a rather standard shocker.

Three young friends are suffering through life in economically starved Detroit.  As a result, Alex (Dylan Minnette), Rocky (Jane Levy) and Money (Daniel Zovatto) have turned to a life of crime.  They rob houses, careful not to steal cash and to only take a certain amount of stuff, to keep their crime from becoming a felony.  How smart of them!

They come up with what they think is the smartest plan of all, to rob the house of a blind man, a job they feel will be a piece of cake. They’re interested in this guy because supposedly he’s got a huge stash of cash hidden inside his house, the result of a settlement in a wrongful death suit against the person who killed his daughter in a traffic accident. The only one who’s not on board at first is Alex, since it means breaking their “no cash” rule, but he’s got a thing for Rocky, and so he eventually changes his mind and joins his friends.

So, they break into the guy’s house, and for them, that’s where the fun stops, because it turns out that the blind man (Stephen Lang) is an ex-soldier, and even though he’s blind, he’s a trained killer. Suddenly, they find themselves trapped inside the house with this deadly soldier.  More than that, he’s also harboring a sinister secret.

And when they find themselves in the same room with him, the only way to escape is remain still and silent, and to take the advice of the film’s title:  DON’T BREATHE!

DON’T BREATHE is an okay thriller.  I enjoyed the first half more than the second, where it deteriorates into standard horror movie fare.

Early on, we meet our three main characters, and thanks to some solid acting performances, we kinda like these folks, even if they are robbing houses.

There’s Rocky, who’s beautiful and spunky, and Jane Levy delivers a nice performance here.  She’s also given the most background, as we learn about her troubled childhood and why she wants to leave Detroit so badly, which is why she desperately wants to steal the blind man’s money.

Dylan Minnette is also very good as Alex.  Minnette played the bully in LET ME IN (2010) and he played Hugh Jackman’s son in PRISONERS (2013).

Money is probably the least developed of the three, but he’s played by the talented young actor Daniel Zovatto, who made a strong impression a couple of years ago in the quality horror movie IT FOLLOWS (2014).  He also had a small recurring role in FEAR THE WALKING DEAD.  Money is almost a throwaway role, but Zovatto prevents this from happening by making this hothead thief a bit more thee-dimensional than expected.

Stephen Lang is chilling as the blind man, at least at first anyway.  Strangely, the more we learn about him, including just what it is he’s up to inside his house, the less frightening he became to me.  In fact, his antics towards the end became almost laughable.

The first half of this movie is extremely suspenseful, and it culminates with the best sequence in the film, when the blind man cuts the power inside his house, plunging it into darkness.  Rocky and Alex then find themselves stuck in a pitch black basement at the mercy of their blind attacker.

But then things deteriorate.

I kept expecting the blind man to capture them and then in some intense in-your-face moments, really show them why they chose the wrong house to break into.  Instead, we learn the blind man’s “terrible” secret, as to what he’s doing inside his house, which I thought was convoluted and a letdown.

The film also goes on too long, and it’s almost as if director Fede Alvarez didn’t know how to end it.  It goes on and on with one “ending” after another, which I found tedious.

I also didn’t like the sequences with the blind man’s guard dog.  Several times in the movie Rocky and Alex outrun the dog, which isn’t at all realistic.  The dog would have caught them easily.  There’s also a sequence where the dog traps Rocky in a car, which is right out of CUJO (1983), only CUJO was better.

The screenplay by director Alavarez and Rodo Sayagues works best early on, when it’s introducing us to the three main characters and does a nice job of capturing the feel of economically deprived Detroit.  It also provides plenty of suspense when they first break into the blind man’s home.

But as the film deteriorates into standard horror movie fare, where young people run around for their lives pursued by one unrealistic threat after another, the film drops several notches.

DON’T BREATHE is a halfway decent horror movie.  It’s got solid acting and a refreshingly original premise, but it doesn’t go the distance, and eventually turns into yet another mindless horror movie with little to offer other than some well placed gore and predictably choreographed screams.

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