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http://www.spoilerfreemoviesleuth.com - The highly trained, physically intimidating blind man returns for another grimy version of a dimly lit, burnt out Detroit in this week’s release of Don’t Breathe 2, a sequel lacking the directorial vision of one Fede Alvarez. Trading tension for a plot lined in ineptitude, this part two should be the franchise ending. Picking up shortly after the events of the original film, we move to another dust covered home somewhere on the outskirts of a city overrun by grungy ex-military miscreants hell bent on violence and pain. Starting off strong, we’re instantly reminded of Stephen Lang’s performance in the first film where he fights back against an invading band of thieves in his home. This time around he’s protecting a young girl from a gang of would be kidnappers that don’t quite know his history or back story. They bring the fight to him but (quite obviously) he’s fully prepared to take  their lives with no thought and full punishment. Lang’s dedication to this role bears the full weight of an underdeveloped script that revels in the purest of  mediocrity. While the film does replicate the aesthetic of the original, the story feels conveniently forced and nowhere near as great as the first. This is a perfect case where the sequel attempts to push the envelope but ends up just being a routine case of exploitation that undoubtedly steals from the soil ridden originality of its predecessor. The editing is choppy at times and doesn’t have the fluidity needed when jumping from scene to scene. Also, when they try to up the ante on the disgusting twist in Don’t Breathe, it falls flat on its face. There are numerous eye rolling scenes that just don’t work in the context of the story and just seem like they’ve been placed there to see how far they can push their audience. For some reason, I got reminiscent feelings of The Crow 2: City of Angels the entire time spent in the cinema. This is a mildly watchable feature but it struggles to rinse and repeat shared themes and seriously  fails by becoming gratuitous for the sake of it while repetition destroys the little plot they have here. Unlike the 2016 film, there will be no rewatch value and there’s no substance to the baseline plotting. With all that said, the biggest issue with Don’t Breathe 2 is the switcheroo they try to pull with Lang’s character. In 2016 we were led to believe he was the victim of a home invasion gone wrong but was revealed that he was an absolute monster that’s kidnapped, raped and tortured a young woman as a replacement for his dead daughter. I’m Don’t Breathe 2 we’re subjected to a sudden shift that turns him into the protagonist, bloody warts and all. It just doesn’t work because most audience members want to sympathize with their hero. We want a connection with his plight and flawed human persona. Unfortunately we already know what an awful person he is and cannot accept a misdirected script that now wants us to believe he’s some savior of lost girls. Realistically, this is the definition of a squandered sequel. We should have been fine never revisiting this scene. When other far greater movies are hitting the cinema and streaming, Don’t Breathe 2 was a needless effort, a total miscalculation on the part of its production company, Ghost House. Please be the end. -CG (function() { var zergnet = document.createElement('script'); zergnet.type = 'text/javascript'; zergnet.async = true; zergnet.src = (document.location.protocol == "https:" ? "https:" : "http:") + '//www.zergnet.com/zerg.js?id=59239'; var znscr = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; znscr.parentNode.insertBefore(zergnet, znscr); })();