"Don't breathe," because the man is blind and can't see you, but he's about three feet away and he's killed one of you already and is trying to kill the rest. That's the basic situation of the new thriller Don't Breathe, and there isn't much more to the plot than that.
Three burglars are trapped in a dark old house in a derelict neighborhood of Detroit, and you wouldn't believe how many shocks and surprises await you and them in those gloomy corridors and spooky rooms. Problems of telling a story in what is supposed to be almost total darkness are not always well-handled; light is inconsistent and sources of light unclear. Whenever a window or door is opened there seems to be light outside, but when the camera goes outside, it's night.
The geography of the interior does not account for how characters keep popping out of so many doorways. But with all the repetitions, there's more variety than you might expect, and if the back stories are more tantalizing that illuminating, at least they spare us the usual flashbacks and add to the general tone of gloom and horror.
There is little that is original in Don't Breathe, but there's plenty to chill the spine without resorting to pain and gore, and nothing supernatural.
I could have done with at least one fully sympathetic character, and there's something disturbing about the treatment of a blind man as so frightening a villain, I would have liked more development of character all around. But Don't Breathe is a mood piece throughout, and accomplishes its modest goals with considerable success.
