Don't Breathe (Film Review)

2016 Screen Gems
Directed by: Fede Álvarez; Written by: Fede Álvarez and Rodo Sayagues
Starring: Jane Levy, Dylan Minnette, Daniel Zovatto, and Stephen Lang
Running Time: 88 Minutes; MPAA Rating: R
The Nicsperiment Score: 7/10

How's this for a hook? Three impoverished teenagers in Detroit rob houses to make ends meet. They get a tip that an old war veteran, who lives on an abandoned street, has $300K in cash in a home safe. Supposedly, a wealthy family paid the old man a big settlement after their daughter killed his in a car accident. Well, the three kids break into the guy's house, but it turns out he's blind...vigilant...angry...and jacked. Trapped in a dark house with a murderous someone whose lack of eyesight has enhanced his other senses, can these three make it out alive, and maybe even escape with the payday?
Don't Breathe's got plenty of style to serve this concept. Fede Álvarez knows where to place and how to move a camera to maximum effect. Under Álvarez's watchful lens, the scary old blind guy could be anywhere at any moment. The soundtrack drones on suspensefully. Just like in all these movies, there's a final girl. It all works fine, and yet it's all so...rote.
I admittedly pulled for the kids to get out of this house of horrors. However, there could have been a far more complex horror classic here, instead of just a stylish genre exercise. Turns out the blind guy has been keeping a slave down in the basement.
Why, on a narrative level, is this old man keeping a slave down in the basement?
Simple: so you can more easily root for the kids.
But why dumb things down so much? Wouldn't a more horrific film simply feature a blind tenet who is himself terrified and innocent, so that there is no clear villain, and the viewer is scared for the outcome of everyone? Instead, it's a black-and-white, these broken home kids need money, and turns out this blind guy they were robbing was actually a kidnapping rapist all along!
Also, the blind hook, for all attention drawn to it, is extremely underutilized. Outside of an exceptional scene where the kids are finally trapped in a room where they truly cannot see, the tenet's blindness is rarely explored as an asset. The guy is more a threat because he's psychotic and ripped, but the entire drawing point of the film was supposed to be that the protagonists are in an environment where they are at a great disadvantage due to the antagonist's blindness. With his hulking muscles and murderous instincts, why even make him blind in the first place if you're not going to lean more into it?
These complaints, though, are merely highlighting that I believe this tightly constructed, entertaining, yet generic suspense film could have instead been an all time classic. Instead, it's merely decent.