Cinemavenger

   The funniest, nastiest movie reviews anywhere.

Don't Breathe

Fun fact:  your skanky cousin Brittany with the raging case of herpes isn't alone.  It's not just humans who get STDs.  All types of animals get 'em.  Lizards, horses, crickets . . . even cute, cuddly koala bears.  That's right.  Believe it or fuck off there's a chlamydia epidemic running rampant in Australia.  Call it koalamydia.  I know I do.

And you know what?  I'd rather get my didgeridoo wet bareback-style with the sluttiest Koaladashian in the Outback than endure Don't Breathe again.

What happened to you, Sam "You Am" Raimi?  You used to be cool.  You were the muthafuckin' horror movie master!  Back in the 80s and 90s, you blended horror and comedy like no one ever had with Evil Dead, Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness.  You gave the world hands down (hand down?) one of the best B-movie stars of all time, Bruce "Give Me Some Sugar Baby" Campbell. 

Then, you allowed Fede "First Time" Alvarez to remake Evil Dead a few years ago.  You even let him pimp your and Bruce's names as Producers.  Alvarez must toss a mean salad because despite the fact that his Evil Dead lacked everything that made your original great you signed back on to "produce" his second major directorial outing, Don't Breathe, and it's so unscary bad it makes 2013's Evil Dead look like The Exorcist fucked The Omen in the Amityville house.

Against the backdrop of crumbling Detroit - by far the most terrifying thing in the movie - Don't Breathe pits three low-level thieves against a blind army vet who is Rutger Hauer in Blind Fury good at killin' and who may . . . oh yeah, let's do this . . . have more to him than meets the eye.

Walking cliche white boy gangsta, Money (Daniel "Demi" Zovatto), his trailer trash girlfriend with a thing for ladybugs, Rocky (Jane "Eugene" Levy) and a guy with access to alarm codes and a Grand Canyon-sized crush on Rocky, Alex (Dylan "Thomas" Minnette), decide to burgle the blind guy (Stephen "Jessica" Lang) after they hear he's got $300K in cash stashed in his house.

As soon as they get inside, the crew of the U S S Dumbfuck does literally everything wrong, and for the viewer that makes Don't Breathe kidney stone-painful to watch.  They use some homemade knockout gas on ol' blindey instead of just hogtying him and making him tell them where the money is.  Once he wakes up and starts stalking them - of course - they don't just jump him three-against-one. 

The characters aren't the only ones stuck in the Land That Brains Forgot.  Alvarez, who also co-wrote this piece of shit, knows as much about awesome third act twists as Moses did about YouTube.  Alvarez's failed, late game, "Oh no he didn't!" moment involves the unlikeliest of kitchen utensils and is as out of place as Morgan Freeman at a Klan rally.

August 26, 2016