Don't Breathe (R)
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Before I watched this, I thought I would put my review under "psychological horror", but now that I've seen it I think "thrillers" is a slightly better fit. It's a close call, though. Anyway, the movie did very well both financially and critically, and I can see why. Still, I'm not exactly the target audience, so while I liked the movie well enough that I'm glad to have seen it once, I can't imagine I'd ever want to watch it again. I might want to see the sequel someday, though.

There are these three friends from Detroit, Rocky (Jane Levy), Money, and Alex, who break into people's houses to steal valuables, but never cash. That changes when they hear about a blind man (Stephen Lang) who lives alone in an abandoned part of the city, who had previously won a huge settlement from the family of a girl who had killed his daughter in a car accident. This time, the friends decide to make an exception and steal money. Unfortunately for them, the blind man turns out to be a badass who becomes the hunter and they his prey. I suppose I should say it seems at first like it should be hard to root for the criminals, but of course we do, because we were introduced to them as the protagonists of the film, and we feel their fear when the situation turns on them. Primarily, we root for Rocky, because we've seen that she has a bad home life, and wants to move to California with her little sister, after this one last job. But we really start to care about them once a very dark secret is revealed about the blind man, which I don't intend to spoil. But he definitely turns out to be worse than them.

Of course, the title refers to the protagonists trying to remain as quiet as possible, so that the blind man (who is never named, btw, but I guess he is in the sequel) can't find them. So noise, however slight, becomes an element of fear in the movie. Beyond that, I don't really want to reveal any more of the plot. But it's certainly a thrilling cat-and-mouse game from start to finish.