Movie Review ~ Last Breath (2025)

As a kid, I devoured Reader’s Digest and was drawn to the “Drama in Real Life” section.   Those pulse-pounding tales of survival—plane crashes, shipwrecks, men trapped in mines for days on end—always had a way of making my suburban existence feel a little too safe.   That same breathless tension runs through Alex Parkinson’s Last Breath, a survival thriller that transforms a harrowing true story into cinematic gold.

Based on the events documented in Parkinson and Richard da Costa’s 2019 documentary of the same name, this adaptation sees Parkinson returning as director, co-writing with Mitchell LaFortune and David Brooks.  The film dramatizes the nightmare faced by Chris Lemons (Finn Cole, F9: The Fast Saga), a commercial diver stranded 330 feet below the North Sea after his umbilical tether snapped during routine repairs.  The catastrophic failure cut off his oxygen, heat, light, and communication with the surface and his fellow divers underwater.  With only five minutes of emergency air supply in his backup tanks, Lemons fought impossible odds against endless darkness and frigid waters while his crewmates scrambled to save him.

Excelling by establishing genuine connections before plunging us into disaster, Last Breath is effective because of its commitment to character over chaos.  Woody Harrelson brings a laidback humor to Duncan Allcock, a veteran diver with twenty years under his wetsuit embarking on his final rotation.  His easygoing charm occasionally feels too casual, but when the crisis hits, Harrelson (Fly Me to the Moon) shifts gears with gripping intensity.

 I haven’t always been his biggest fan, but as David Yuasa, Simu Liu (Barbie) maintains a calculated emotional distance that unravels as the situation deteriorates.  While he’s regulated to the bottom of the sea for much of the film, Cole still shines in the film’s quieter moments, particularly in tender scenes on land with Bobby Rainsbury as his fiancée, Morag, who delivers one of the film’s most naturalistic performances in bookending scenes and flashbacks.

While the scripted camaraderie among the divers occasionally feels manufactured—leaning a bit too hard on philosophical exchanges that real-life professionals might not indulge in—the film finds its rhythm once disaster strikes.  That’s also when the crew topside gets in on the action with Cliff Curtis (The Meg) low-key but commanding as captain of the ship.  Similarly, Mark Bonnar’s (Napoleon) surface supervisor gives the right amount of emotion watching helplessly as his team fights for survival.  There’s also brief but strong supporting work from MyAnna Buring (Kill List) as first officer Hanna, steering clear of the clichéd stoic-woman-in-crisis trope.

For his narrative feature debut, documentarian Parkinson demonstrates a remarkably sure hand with the shift in filmmaking styles.  He knows tension isn’t about frantic editing but about letting dread build naturally.  Last Breath is a taut, anxiety-inducing thriller but also a study of professionalism under pressure.   Make no mistake, though, the “dad movie” vibes are strong—a workmanlike focus on people doing their jobs rather than indulging in overwrought monologues.  This approach serves the material perfectly, elevating technical problem-solving into life-or-death stakes.

Visually, the film is stunning in the most unsettling way.  Nick Remy Matthews’ cinematography transforms the ocean floor into an alien landscape—simultaneously vast and suffocating.  The underwater sequences achieve a disorienting beauty, with light slicing through darkened depths like fragile lifelines.  (Make sure to see this on a screen with clear projection; the film is murky enough without the brightness turned down to save the bulbs.) 

The visual effects from RISE Visual Effects Studios are seamless, immersing viewers hundreds of feet below the surface without distraction.  Equally impressive is Tania Goding’s measured editing, which balances the escalating tension between the seabed crisis and the ship above without losing clarity or a sense of place.  Even with dual storylines, the stakes remain grippingly clear.

But what I found that truly sets Last Breath apart isn’t just its life-or-death stakes—it’s the way it plays with the aural experience for viewers.  The sound design is masterful, using silence and the mechanical rhythm of breathing to create unbearable suspense.  Some sequences left my theater in stunned silence, particularly when the film strips away sound entirely, mirroring Lemons’ terrifying isolation.

**POSSIBLE SPOILER** Beyond its nerve-shredding tension, Last Breath lingers because of its fascination with the inexplicable.  Lemons survived approximately 30 minutes without his primary air supply—a medical impossibility that defies scientific explanation.  The film leans into this mystery, suggesting that sometimes, human resilience operates beyond what we understand.  While the narrative hits familiar survival story beats, the emotional weight remains intense, balancing technical accuracy with human drama.  **END POSSIBLE SPOILER**

For those unfamiliar with the 2019 documentary, Last Breath delivers genuine suspense.  And even if you know how the story ends, the final stretch is a heart-pounding rush.   A number of times throughout the film, I found myself gripping my armrest as the rescue clock ticked down.  This is survival cinema at its best—lean, propulsive, and executed with a clear sense of purpose by filmmakers with a clear vision of what story they want to tell and how they want to tell it.

In bringing this remarkable true story to the big screen, Parkinson has crafted a standout entry in the survival thriller genre.  It’s a film that reminds us how quickly an ordinary workday can become an extraordinary fight for life—exactly the kind of story that once gripped me in those Reader’s Digest pages.  When told right, these stories of endurance are impossible to resist.  Last Breath tells it right.