Movie Review ~ The Last Breath

From the moment JAWS sank its teeth into pop culture, terrifying audiences out of the water (and, if you believe urban legends, taking baths), Hollywood has been fond of throwing money at any filmmaker who pitches an idea about the underwater apex predators of the ocean: sharks.  Shark cinema is a curious beast, often swimming between terror and total absurdity.  The campy chaos of the Sharknado franchise didn’t do much to further the genre’s legitimacy, only leading to even cheaper knockoffs that cross-bred sharks with other animals (and even ghosts!).  Serious efforts to recreate the magic of Spielberg’s 1975 masterpiece (1999’s Deep Blue Sea, 2016’s The Shallows, 2017’s 47 Meters Down, and it’s 2019’s in-name-only sequel) could only skim the surface of what made the first fin fright flick so fun.

Recently, The Black Demon, Maneater, The Reef: Stalked, Great White, and Deep Blue Sea 3 have attempted to churn the waters with scary sharks, but low-quality effects, poor writing, and skimpy productions have kept them beached.  Big-budget studio films like The Meg and Meg 2: The Trench were played for more laughs than screams.  Earlier this summer, director Xavier Gens struck gold with Under Paris, a rare breed of underwater creature feature that balanced frights with a concept that worked.  Now, along swims The Last Breath, directed by Joachim Hedén, another film with bite that embraces its limitations, taking audiences on a dive into treacherous waters—though not without its share of complications.

There’s promise from the start as the film opens in the ’40s when the USS Charlotte is torpedoed while at sea near the British Virgin Islands.  In a sequence reminiscent of Quint’s famous speech in JAWS, two men from the warship cling to a piece of the wreckage for safety but realize pretty quickly they have company.  Jumping forward to the present day, we meet Captain Levi (the late Julian Sands, Arachnophobia) and his deckhand Noah (Jack Parr), who have been searching for the wreckage of the Charlotte that is rumored to be buried in the sand at the bottom of the crystal blue waters surrounding the Virgin Islands.  On a routine dive, Noah finds the wreckage preserved under decades of sand accumulation.

Celebrating this once-in-a-lifetime find will have to wait because Noah’s friends are arriving for a vacation.  The shark bait, er, college classmates of Noah include rich boy brat Brett (Alexander Arnold, Yesterday), Noah’s ex-girlfriend and medical student Sam (Kim Spearman), and Riley (Erin Mullen) and Logan (Arlo Carter), two characters that don’t have much definition other than that they are meant to be somewhat endearing because they aren’t as awful as Brett.  When Brett hears about the discovery of the Charlotte, he insists Noah takes them to view the debris of the eighty-year-old vessel.  Needing the money to pay off Levi’s debts, Noah agrees.  The dream dive to the wreck turns nightmarish as the friends become trapped inside by sharks who don’t care that their air supply is dwindling.  Thirty meters down and with their escape routes blocked, how will they distract the sharks long enough to find a way out of the ship’s maze of passages and get to the surface without becoming chum?

In concept, the plot sounds like a dream for both thrill seekers and lovers of shark cinema alike.  A sunken ship, a group of young adventurous divers, and lurking death hiding in the shadows beneath the waves.  The execution, however, is a tad waterlogged.  One of the first oddities encountered, which I know is a strange nitpick, is the bizarre structure of the opening credits.  Rolling out in an unconventional sequence: producers, crew, title, cast, writers, underwater filmmakers, and finally, the director; it defies all logic in any film I’ve seen up until this point and feels like they were typed freehand as someone remembered who to include. 

Then there’s the pacing.  Hedén, who previously helmed the gripping Norwegian film Breaking Surface in 2020—a film so well done it was remade for English audiences as The Dive in 2023—returns to familiar aquatic territory without that taut, relentless pace.  After being teased with the promise of toothy terror in the opening scene, the film focuses on interpersonal drama and underwater claustrophobia for the next fifty minutes.  This character-building isn’t wholly unappreciated. Andrew Prendergast and Nick Saltrese’s screenplay can trend toward soap opera drama as the friends only begin to hash out old grudges before they head to the ship.  Of course, everything comes to a head when the unexpected happens, adding more stress to an already dangerous encounter.

That opening sequence hints at the untapped potential for what a period shark film might look like, and I hope someone takes a shot at that one day.  Hedén builds the anticipation in The Last Breath promisingly enough, suggesting an atmospheric thriller featuring sharks stalking the ship for their prey.  Once the shark action kicks into high gear, the script has a way of conveniently injuring characters, leaving them trailing just enough blood in the water to keep the sharks snapping at their flippers in a perpetual feeding frenzy.  Whether it’s a scrape here or a gash there, the bloodletting feels almost obligatory and on a set schedule, serving more to maintain tension than to advance the plot. It’s a narrative device that, while effectively keeping viewers on edge, often dips into predictability.

Performances across the board are better than expected, yet the decision to have the British cast take on American accents is odd considering the location.  In one of his final roles, Sands gives his grizzled Captain character (who knits because of muscle tremors in his hands) a few interesting moments, even if most of the early non-shark exposition features him waxing philosophically.  I’m OK with it if that meant more screen time for the appealing actor who died so tragically.  Spearman and Parr do their best to keep their heads above water as exes thrown together in a crisis, but their dialogue often feels as drenched as their characters.

As the credits rolled (in whatever order they chose this time), I found myself a bit torn.  The Last Breath was one of the more ambitiously crafted films in the shark cinema genre that wound up bogged down by its premise.  Even so, it stays afloat because it doesn’t deal in complete clichés.  The underwater photography by Eric Börjeson (Kon-Tiki) is gorgeous, and if it weren’t for all those pesky sharks, it would tempt you to book passage to the Virgin Islands post haste.  As the latest entry in the endless supply of shark tales, it has enough hold to keep audiences on the hook with more than a few heart-pounding moments.  You just have to wait a bit for the fish to bite.