Don’t Breathe (2016)

“You have to be made accountable...”

I know I’m on a mission to watch all the Marvel and DC related movies, plus all the big horror franchises, as well as all the classic movies I haven’t blogged yet, which is a rather large number of films. But I still need to intersperse that with modern-ish films that ain’t part of no franchise. Such as this one. It’s a thriller that’s been compared with Hitchcock (yes, I need to watch more of his stuff), is full of suspense and is helmed by the director of the new Evil Dead. Which I haven’t seen. So many films I haven’t seen but should have done, and this is the 489th film in this blog. It feels like being Sisyphus, except it’s a lot more fun. So, er, not like Sisyphus at all then. Anyway...

Let's briefly acknowledge that the film is bloody good and establish that I'll return to that theme very shortly, shall we? Because this film, like Saw and so many others, is a thriller, and an excellent one at that, but marketed as a horror film when it blatantly isn't. I wish they wouldn't do that.

With that little whinge out of the way, though, this is a proper tense little thriller about three burglars- two of whom are humanised and given reasons (if not excuses) for what they do and one (he dies first, of course) who is just a twat. There’s a real sense of place in this film, set in the extraordinary city of Detroit, the poster child for urban decline and public squalor. Here we have the house which is the target of the heist, the only inhabited premises in the neighbourhood with all the plot convenience that implies. This area is barely inhabited and so plausibly lawless. Hence we can have a thriller in which three amateur burglars attempt to rob an "old" man (yes, a Gulf War veteran described as "old", and that war was only in '91...) but he's more than a match for them. And has a big secret.

It's not about the plot, though. It's about the superb camerawork and the Hitchcockian suspense, and the nice little twists at the end. This film has no stars, it has a tiny budget, but it does exactly what a good film should: gets the basics very, very right.

You probably haven't seen this film. That's a shame- it's getting a lot of well-deserved word of mouth and is well worth seeing. Just think Hitchcock, not horror.