10/29: Don't Breathe

10/29: Tonight's film was Fede Alvarez's Don't Breathe. Full disclosure, the concept for this movie seemed beyond dumb when I first saw the trailer, yet everyone kept telling me how good it was. I decided Halloween weekend would be a good time to check it out. Gotta say, I was very pleasantly surprised. The concept is pretty simple: three young thieves break into a blind war veterans home to steal a massive amount of money in received in a settlement. However, things don't go quite as planned as the man finds the three and kills one. The other two must try to escape the house without the blind man finding them out. 

As I said, I was really surprised that this concept had legs, but it was actually pretty damn scary. Alvarez does an excellent job of making you feel the fear and anxiety of the characters, avoiding being caught and knowing that death is, albeit blindly, stalking them. Of course there's some suspension of disbelief involved here and I could have done without the very out-of-left field twist (the movie was fine without it) and the pretty drug out back-and-forth at the end (at times it felt like the concept was being drug out to hit the hour and a half runtime), but ultimately this is a damn fine small scale horror movie. I was genuinely writhing in my chair at parts, sucked into the plight of the characters; if you're able to do that to me after 5 of these horror binges your movie is doing something right. 

8.5/10