Don’t Breathe Review

Can one bad plot twist ruin a whole movie? If the majority of a film is stellar, does a disastrous final act entirely invalidate it? I’ve been mulling this over ever since I saw “Don’t Breathe,” a pitch-perfect thriller that actively works against its own strengths. I think most people would say a botched third-act shouldn’t erase you enjoyment of the first two-thirds. Those parts are still good, despite the flawed ending. But I disagree. Hollywood movies aren’t a collection of random pieces; they’re interconnected structures that build off each other. A terrible ending shades the entire piece in a bad light. If you had a delicious pasta dish, and found a a loose hair at the bottom, you’d probably complain, despite what came before. That’s “Don’t Breathe.”

But as I said, before the third-act, it’s aces. “Breathe” follows three house thieves in blighted Detroit. They decide to rob a blind man, who’s rumoured to have hundreds of thousands of dollars. Unfortunately, he’s a trained army veteran with a penchant for violence. He immediately kills one of the thieves and the other two fight to stay quiet and escape. It’s a feature-length version of Don’t Wake Daddy.

The film is a lesson in economy. We’re stuck in the house before the 20-minute mark, but we instantly understand the characters and their motivations. They’re broad, but given enough detail to be interesting. The actors invest their characters with a decent level of depth. Stephen Lang, while occasionally stiff and one-note, gives a good physical performance as the blind man.

The real star here is the camera. Director Fede Alvarez carefully lays out the geography of the house, lingering on certain objects, making sure we think we understand every nook and cranny. Alvarez then twists our sense of security with a series of well-staged scenes where the thieves have to silently manoeuvre around the blind man. We know where they are, but danger could come from anywhere. It’s genuinely nerve wracking, as freedom is always just out of reach and one wrong step could blow their cover. For its first forty minutes, “Don’t Breathe” is the perfect version of itself.

Then it introduces its first plot twist, which is fairly surprising and does a good job of re-contextualizing our sympathies. Unfortunately, it’s followed by an uninspired chase in an dark basement which lacks the nail-biting quality of earlier scenes. The film never fully recovers from this moment, as the rest of the film becomes more action than horror. It’s all still good, though.

Then the film introduces its final twist and follows it up with an awful attempted rape scene. It’s abysmal and tone-deaf. It stops being scary and becomes downright goofy. The movie then staggers to a moronic ending that contains three false climaxes and limp epilogue. The last 20 minutes of “Don’t Breathe” destroy everything it built.

This is a tough one. I like the world-building and camera work in the first half of “Don’t Breathe.” But its ending left a bad taste in my mouth. Leaving the theatre, I didn’t appreciate the well-constructed scares or thrills; I was just annoyed.

It’s hard for any movie to stick the landing. Choosing when and how to stop a story is tricky. “Don’t Breathe” didn’t do itself any favours by tearing out its navigation system before cratering in the ground.