Preteen girl looking at a cell phone with her parents

Personalized picks at your fingertips

Get the mobile app on iOS and Android

Parents' Guide to

Don't Breathe 2

By Jeffrey M. Anderson, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 16+

Wildly gory horror sequel has a twisted moral compass.

Movie R 2021 90 minutes
Don't Breathe 2 Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Community Reviews

age 16+

Based on 3 parent reviews

age 13+

Intense, gripping thriller has gruesome violence

Don’t Breathe 2 will have you on the edge of your seat, the entire time. No doubt about it, but this is caused by the way it utilizes graphic and disturbing violence. VIOLENCE: SEVERE A woman is suddenly choked against her seat in a car before being bashed in the face with a hammer, splattering blood on the windows and surfaces and caving her head in. This is quickly shot and an intense scene, so shots of the graphic violence are limited. A dog is killed offscreen. A man chokes another man against a bar in a window, before he stabs the attacker. He is shown cleaning the bloody, open wound later. 2 men fight with brutal punching, bashing with hard objects, smashing against cabinets and the floor. Bloody face wounds are shown before a man sets off a fiery explosion causing one of the men to fly back and smash against a wall. His burnt corpse is shown after. A young girl is in constant peril, including situations of drowning, electrocution, forced heart removal, drugging, fires, heights and more. A man is suddenly grabbed before we see him with his nose and mouth glued shut and is struggling to breath. Because of this, another man grabs a sharp tool and stabs into the mans cheek in graphic detail before he starts breathing out of the cheek hole and cuts his glued mouth open, causing blood to spill out of his mouth. A man is attacked and beaten to the ground. A man is stabbed through the foot with a pitch fork, has it torn out then is stabbed in the facial area with it before being brutally pulped with a shovel. He is shown swinging it up and down, and we see an up close shot of the mans face being caved in and disfigured by the beating while in progress. The killer is shown splattered with blood, and the disturbing corpse is shown later on with his caved in head visible. A house is burned down, and a man jumps out the window, lands on a greenhouse, falls through the glass of the greenhouse and crashes out of another window onto the ground. No injury shown, but he is seen visibly distressed. Two men fight with brutal punches. A hammer is used in the fight and the one man throws the hammer at the other, smashing into his face and sending him to the ground. After, the one man lifts the hammer up from his face and slams it down, cutting to another scene and implying he smashed in the other mans face. 3 men are shot dead with a gun. This is pretty quick, and less graphic than other scenes in the film. Two men fight with their fists and knives. Both fight in a dim, foggy environment and they both slice each other with their blades in up close, bloody shots. At the end of the fight, one of the men are strangled up against a wall and have their eyes slowly gauged out onscreen. The camera doesn’t cut away, and this is quite prolonged and extremely graphic and disturbing. Blood seeps and sprays from both eyes before his eyeless corpse falls to the ground. Later on, the same man stabs the other again through the stomach with a long blade, before the other is stabbed through the chest with a machete. This is the bloodiest, goriest and most graphic scene in the film, not for the faint of heart. During the above sequence, a woman is shot accidentally and dies while handcuffed to a young girl. Due to this, the dead woman and girl dangle from a high point, and the girl is forced to slowly hack the woman’s arm off with a machete. This is up close and extremely gory. LANGUAGE: MODERATE 21 uses of “f*ck” including “motherf*cker” and some use of “sh*t” along with milder profanity. DRUG CONTENT: MILD Reference to meth, meth labs and drugs. A meth lab is briefly shown with a beaker on a table. Absolutely no graphic drug use. OVERALL: 13+ for strong grisly violence, language
age 16+

“If it ain’t broke don’t fix it “

Now we all know “Don’t Breathe” was a hit ! It gave us all the suspense and shock factor we need along with a great story line, plot and characters. I speak for 90% of those who watched the movie we were left wanting more ! In the end of the first movie it left us all feeling like a sequel was coming. We all had gotten so invested in the story plot and characters we wanted to see where it would continue. “Don’t Breathe 2” completely let us down in our hopes. Although a good movie a major let down to what we all were waiting for in the sequel. The first movie was so good they didn’t need to come up with a completely different plot. We wanted and waiting for it to pick up where it ended with more intensity. Instead we got something unrelated 6 years later. We were forced to forget about the hit original movie that had us all stunned, satisfied and wanting more. Little miss Grace played her role extremely well but perhaps a role related to the first movie would of done so much more better and had been so much more satisfying. She could of been the daughter of his “turkey baster” fertilization that he would return to capture in replace of his daughter who was taken from him in a car crash. Hunting down the original persons who escaped his house robbery the first time around. As a dedicated fan the first movie wasn’t broke so why fix it with a new sequel unrelated. Totally disappointed in the idea not to string the two movies together. I will say the movie was not too bad but the first “Don’t Breathe” was so much better. They should of taken the sequel movie and made it an unrelated independent movie under a different name and pretenses. Still faithfully waiting for a sequel to the original. Let’s pick up where the movie left off first time around that had us all hooked.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say (3 ):
Kids say (9 ):

This sequel, which turns the original movie's deadly Blind Man into the protagonist, has a few deft, intense sequences, but its ridiculous villains and twisted moral compass ultimately sink it. Directed by Rodo Sayagues, screenwriter of the original Don't Breathe and the Evil Dead remake, the wildly gory Don't Breathe 2 is at its best with the cat-and-mouse elements, such as Phoenix cleverly dodging the invaders, creating diversions, and scrambling into unlikely hiding places -- even hanging off of the edge of a staircase. Another sequence has Norman in an unfamiliar basement, gaining the advantage after a broken water pipe covers the floor in sloshing water. A third takes place dangerously close to the edge of an empty swimming pool.

But the villains are a huge downside. At first, they seem to be veterans of the war in Iraq, but they ultimately seem to be two-bit psychopaths or members of some half-baked street gang. Their real motivations are meant to be a surprise, but as each piece of the puzzle is revealed, it makes less and less sense. (Suffice it to say that showing up at Phoenix's house in the middle of the night with guns shouldn't have been their smartest plan.) Norman is likewise problematic: He's very tough, but he's haunted by his hideous misdeeds and is beaten so badly that his yelps of pain start to wear viewers down. He's a truly sad character, perhaps an ill fit for an "entertainment" thriller like Don't Breathe 2. A strange coda further indicates complete emotional detachment.

Movie Details

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.

See how we rate