I thought that the first Don’t Breathe was a fantastic thrill-ride of a movie and that it was awesome Fade Alverez had a hand in the movie, even if directing duties were handled by first-time director, Rodo Sayagues. As much as I loved the first one and as interested as I was in this sequel, I must admit it seemed like a very unnecessary sequel, to be honest.
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The Movie Review
The blind man played by Stephen Lang was such an interesting character from the first movie. He was at first a victim, an old blind war veteran that was being taken advantage of by these punks! Of course, it would turn out he was far from a victim and he was actually a despicable man who had a very dark and vile secret in his basement.
That first movie was just so well done. It truly is one of the best thriller movies of that decade and while I felt a sequel was unnecessary, I was very interested to see how his character would develop. The movie takes place eight years after the first movie and we find the blind man living with a young 11-year-old girl called Phoenix played incredibly well by the talented Madelyn Grace, along with his rottweiler from the first movie.
He rescued her from a house fire and has been looking after her ever since. The blind man is such an interesting character, the things he did in that first movie were horrible, but he was doing it because of the loss of his daughter. You could argue that he sees looking after this girl as a way of making up for that.
His peaceful life is soon ruined when his past catches up with him and a violent group break in and take the girl. The whole home invasion part of the first movie was a huge reason it was as popular as it was. That is a huge reason why this again, is such a big part here, but while the violence is once again off the charts, there is just something lacking about it.
He then has to take things into his own hands as he heads out to try and get this girl back. I think that they had a great chance here to really develop this character, but we do not actually learn much more about him than we already knew. I think that the way they make you kind of confused if you should be rooting for this guy is clever, but I wanted to know more about him.
The first Don’t Breathe movie came out of nowhere and was a massive hit so I get why the studio wanted a second one. However, I think that while there are some good ideas here, it just cannot live up to that shock the first movie made you feel. This is not a bad movie at all, the blind man is still great and it has a lot of tension, but it feels like it is lacking that special something that made the first one so good.