Don't Breathe

Back when I was a kid, we use to play this stupid game called N word knocking. Now I didn’t think much of it at the time because I was a dumb pre-teen but now that I’ve had the opportunity to look back, I realize how unbelievably racist of a name that was for a kid’s game! I mean seriously, what kind of a jerk comes up with that title? It was such a common thing though that I didn’t even get mad when my white friends would call me up and ask if I wanted to play it; it was just something that we did for fun. Now if you’re not familiar with it, it’s when you go up to someone’s house, ring the doorbell, and run off somewhere to go hide. Thankfully we never put a bag of burning crap on their doorstep like in Billy Madison, because in Texas that’s legal grounds to get shot, but we would be in the dark somewhere laughing our butts off as some old person cursed us and shook their fists in the air.

Well because we played this game with regularity, we always knew whose houses we were better off skipping. It was either the grumpy old man who owned a shotgun and had nothing else to do but dream about hunting season all year long or it was the lonely old lady who had a bad heart condition. Now every now and then someone would hit up the old lady’s house anyway just to be a jerk but no one was ever dumb enough to hit up the house of the old hick. We all knew that if we did there was a good chance we’d be dead before we even had the chance to hit puberty!

Well all of this is what was running through my mind as I watched the latest thriller in Don’t Breathe. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about doing whatever it takes to get out of Detroit; hell I would’ve held up an entire Klan meeting by myself if it meant I could get out of Victoria, but robbing a blind old army vet??? Even I know not to mess with a military man who has nothing to lose. Or so I thought he had nothing to lose.

In Breathe we meet Rocky (Jane Levy of Evil Dead), her boyfriend Money (yes that’s really his name), and her best friend Alex (Dylan Minnette of Goosebumps). They are burglars who use Alex’s dad’s security business to rob homes. Alex has access to the security codes of all of his dad’s clients so they use that information to gain access, stage a break in and walk out with less than 10k worth of goods so it doesn’t count as grand larceny. They do this with the hopes of one day saving enough money so they can eventually move out of awful Detroit. Well one day they come across the old army vet I mentioned earlier and they realize that not only does he have over 300k in his house but he also happens to be one of Alex’s father’s clients. The Blind Man got the money from a settlement after his daughter was killed in a drunk driving accident a few years ago. He has become a total recluse and lives in a neighborhood that is basically deserted.

The kids all believe that this will be an easy job and one that can bring an end their robbery days forever but they soon realize that they are in for quite a surprise when they actually do break in. Not only is this old man more than capable when it comes to defending himself and his home but he also has a dark secret; and it’s a pretty messed up secret if I should say so myself. And once he gets a hold of their gun and barricades them in, these kids are in for the fight of their lives.

One of the many things I loved about this film is that the director was obviously a fan of The Silence of the Lambs. He took the film’s second best scene, the one where Buffalo Bill is creepily tracking down Clarice with his night vision goggles in his blacked out basement, and basically recreated it with a blind man and extended it by about 10 minutes. This scene caused quite a few moments where you wanted to shout out to the screen to help them, but thankfully I wasn’t in south Dallas, so no one actually did. Oh and by the way, Lambs’ best scene is where Buffalo Bill does his little tuck dance in the mirror to Goodbye Horses but that’s another story for another time.

Another thing I liked is that the director kept you on your toes; just when you think everything is about to be alright, something else pops up and you’re right back to being freaked out. The film is only 90 minutes long but it literally feels like you’re in the house with these kids all night long. And trust me when I say that’s a good thing. Now looking back there are quite a few plot holes that had me questioning the reality of certain situations but the film is so intense, there’s no way you have time to break down what’s happening; you’re just hoping that these kids escape this crazy old vet. As a matte =r of fact, I’m never going around another blind man as long as I live! I’d rather take my chances sleeping on the streets of Chi-Raq!

Don’t Breathe had me cursing out loud more times than I’d to admit and it’s because of this that I give it a rating of very FRESH!