I found the first Don’t Breathe movie absolutely brilliant because it bought something new to the horror genre and I do believe with a genre like horror, being so subjective on what scares people, when you can bring something new to it that is fresh and exciting it can not only make horror feel scary again but also bring in an even wider audience. So why Don’t Breathe 2 went down the route that it did, I do not know.

Don’t Breathe 2 continue to follow the main villain from the original film as he is seen with a young girl. We know from the first film that his young daughter was killed in a car crash and despite the obvious casting differences I did strongly believe that this was a prequel and the girl we were seeing in the film was his now dead daughter. So we follow this character as he ends up in a home invasion scenario when it turns out that the young girl that’s with him was actually stolen by him from what seems to be a loving family, but a very concerning one, concerning in the way that they expect to get their daughter back through a lot of violence.

In the first film the fact that the main character is blind was a big plot point to it and device because we then had moments where the character would walk past other characters without knowing they’re there and turn the lights off so that the seeing characters would then be blinded too, but for whatever reason this wasn’t used in this film and instead it was simply a home invasion movie with a lot of gore. At no point is the fact that the main character is blind brought into the storyline at all and it’s such a shame because that was what made the first film so good.

As I can continue to watch this film I did feel that they were just pushing gore to the forefront of everything because they didn’t know what else to do and thought that would be a good enough shock tactic to excite and terrify the audience, and while the gore is horrific, it’s very realistic and just really disgusting, the amount of blood is over the top in my opinion and unfortunately does pull away from how good the first film was with its slow burn build up with the disability of the main character being a major plot point.

And then we come to the ending and all the way through this film I thought it was a prequel, I thought this showed the story of how the blind man became the vengeful person he did because he loses his daughter…and then he dies in the end…and I was left feeling shocked but not in a good way. I was expecting to see the young girl die at the end of this film, and then for the main character to use the people that took her from his situation as revenge, and then ultimately finding the woman he had trapped in the first film. But no there was none of that, yes he killed a lot of people, yes there was lots of blood and gore, but still for everyone to just die at the end felt really lacklustre and just so underwhelming.

I absolutely adored the first film, I thought it was so innovative and new and so to then come out with this as the sequel was so upsetting. It really ruins the characters for me because they didn’t have that intrigue and darkness that we had seen in the first film and all of the ways of filmmaking and creating the story on the fact that this man is blind was completely cut and lost and really made it obsolete. I would definitely not recommend this film but I would highly recommend the original because, while the original is an absolutely stellar piece of horror filmmaking, this is a travesty that does not deserve any attention.

What do you think of Don’t Breathe 2?

Until next time.

Published by shonaharding

Film and TV critic. View all posts by shonaharding