Don't Breathe 2

  Eight years after the events of 2016's Don't Breathe, blind psychopath villain Norman Nordstrom (Stephen Lang) is living contentedly with Phoenix, a cute pre-teen daughter (Madelyn Grace) in a (different) nicely kept house in a bad street. He's even befriended Hernandez (Stephanie Arcilla), a younger vet who brings him groceries and helps him run a business from home.

 Everything is not all right, and Nordstrom is still very much not OK; he lives like a survivalist nutjob, and insists his daughter be almost completely isolated from the outside world and run through regular survival games. This makes the relationship a bit fraught, but otherwise they do seem to love each other.
 As it turns out, though, in one of the films many, many perverse touches, Nordstrom was right in fearing the outside world; As soon as he lets Phoenix go on a little field trip with Hernandez, a skeevy-looking thug (Brendan Sexton III) accosts her at a public restroom and then follows her back home.

 The thug's got it in for the little girl - for reasons that are explained in time, and have to do with Phoenix's provenance; While the original was more of a horror movie with Nordstrom as the slasher, this one's an action thriller with Nordstrom... well,  he's still pretty much a slasher, but he's trying to defend a likeable kid from a bunch of reprobates.

 Don't Breathe 2 is fucking nuts, and I mean that (as I usually do) admiringly. The first movie played it relatively straight for a long time before letting its freak flag fly with some truly out-there developments. This one, also written by the team of Fede Alvarez and Rodo Sayagues, takes the time to establish things properly, but once what the thugs are up to becomes apparent, it starts belting out perverse twists at a rapid clip. The script is relatively well thought-out, ridiculous, and a whole lot of pulpy fun.

 There are some severe plausibility issues: some easily forgiven, like a dog chase that keeps resetting the distances, or how watertight a metal cabinet would be (or how quickly it would fill up with water). Others are a bit more troubling - the main issue being the issue of Nordstrom's blindness. The first movie very carefully grounded him as an efficient killing machine only within the confines of his own house, as he knew it intimately; Here, being out in new spaces only hinders him when the script remembers he's blind - he's closer to, say, Matt Murdock than Zatoichi.

 But that's part and parcel of the sequel simply being a lot crazier. It's not exactly an action movie, but it's as heightened as an action movie; I'm not saying that always works, but it's always an approach I root for.
 The fights aren't that good, but that's not what the movie is about. Instead we get a stunning sequence in that first home invasion segment where the camera sinuously moves through hallways, into rooms and down stairwells, tracking Phoenix as she evades the would-be abductors, at one point by hanging off a ledge ninja-style. The rest of the movie struggles to offer anything even close to that level (and as a whole this one isn't really a patch on the original movie), but it's still full of cool moments, fun reversals and brutal carnage.

 Small aside: it also has the same joke The Killer would make a couple years later, where a complete sociopath can't bring himself to take care of a dog properly. You can be a rapist/killer, apparently, but killing a dog - one that's trying to rip your throat out, even - is a bridge too far. At least here it's an established trait.

 And it looks amazing! Co-writer Rodo Sayagues directs this time around, and along with cinematographer Pedro Luque they manage some really striking imagery. Colorful might be the wrong word here, but scenes set in a glasshouse or an abandoned pool - with shafts of sunlight making everything they touch look incandescent - are very atmospheric and good-looking.

 As far as genre-switched sequels it doesn't take things as far as it could have - you could still say both movies are thrillers at their core - but it still does a lot to distinguish itself. A ballsy action/thriller with a perverse sense of fun is more than good enough for me.