"Don't Breathe" breathes new life into the tropes of horror.
It's hard to find new ways to spin tales of terror, but this one surely does. Written by Fred Alvarez and Rodo Sayagues, and directed by Alvarez, "Don't Breathe" is a deceptively simple tale of a robbery gone wrong when the three perps discover that the blind old man they're robbing is one resourceful Iraq War vet. Suddenly, their prey becomes the predator, and he locks the robbers in his haunted house filled with secret corridors, hostage rooms, and other scary surprises. The story takes what could have been cliché characters and obvious set pieces and turns them into something more complex and riveting. Perhaps the biggest shock in this film, one that's filled with them, is how much surprise the filmmakers add to nearly every frame.
