Some companies can’t seem to grasp the concept of stand alone films. Even though “Don’t Breathe” left us with no unanswered questions, the production company still decided to move forward with presenting a “Don’t Breathe 2.” 

This films dives in eight years after the first one, moving forward with Norman Nordstrom, the blind man (Stephan Lang) as he continues out his days off the grid, far from society with his daughter, Phoenix (Madelyn Grace). From being homeschooled to very little encounters with going into town, Phoenix mostly only interacts with her father. Spending her days in solitude while developing skills to survive on her own in case of another intrusion.

After a sequence of events, Norman’s house is once again broken into, and instead of the intruders looking for millions of dollars, they only came for one thing: Phoenix.

Taking a leap of faith, Norman had to leave his familiar home to go on the hunt to save Phoenix as he did care about her. Once Norman arrived on scene, just in time and for some reason knowing exactly what to do once he gets in the basement of the building even though he has no idea what’s happening upstairs, the revenge killing trend begins again.

The film paints the characters in ways that leave them thinking, ‘who is actually the bad guy?’ While it may be obvious that Phoenix’s kidnappers are actual monsters, is what Norman did okay? 

The directors try hard to present this new idea of Norman, one they want the audience to sympathize with and think of him as a hero. But at the end of the day, he is disturbing in every light you shine on him. It was a nice attempt.

Both of the “Don’t Breathe” films fall pretty average on my scale, as they were unique and had events that were both surprising and twisted, but they just both had a lot of dull parts. “Don’t Breathe 2” left the audience thinking once again: ‘how could someone do that to a young girl?’ As the first film that was a big thought racing through my head after discovering Norman had kept a women in his basement to birth him a child. But this time it was a completely different scenario that had me questioning the character’s morals.

Nowadays, it is hard for me to justify spending money on seeing movies and getting popcorn at the theater, but I did for this one. It wasn’t actually worth buying a medium popcorn and a large slurpee for, but it did have entertaining elements, despite it’s flawed plot at moments.

I will say, it was better than the first one, since we got to move outside his prison of a home and see more action between Norman and his intruders. I originally had no expectations for this film as I didn’t even see a trailer. It was a good sequel if you compare it to the first one, but on a larger scale, the film won’t rank well as a horror movie favorite for me.

At least this time, in the end everyone got what they deserved.

Rating: 2.3/5 stars