The Last Breath is the latest killer shark movie, but can it do something fresh with one of cinema’s most tired subgenres?
As someone with an unwavering interest in shark movies, I’m never quite sure what I find most frustrating. The goddamn movies that don’t make that much money in any aspect of the production? Or are they the ones who get one point well and smell the others so bad a shark wouldn’t eat them?
Last Breath is in the latter camp. There is a very commendable understanding of underwater cinematography here. But this focus seems to mean logic and reason have been largely drained from the narrative’s oxygen tank.
Before we get into that, the story: A group of college friends are increasingly estranged seven years after their initial life together. Their latest reunion comes two full years after the last one. So this dynamic leads to a certain desperation to spend a moment together.
Noah (Jack Parr – The Limehouse Golem) teams up with seasoned ocean traveler and dive tour owner Levi (Julian Sands in what appears to be his final role before his tragic death) to find a long-lost battleship. They are finally able to find the wreck after storms dig it up from the sands of the deep. Financial pressures are mentioned and then explicitly stated. This presents an opportunity when Noah’s wealthy best friend Brett (Alexander Arnold) offers a princely sum to show his Instagram fans that he has taken his first forays into exploring a historic shipwreck. So the college friends’ reunion is about to culminate in a landmark dive before the authorities get their hands on it.
The Last Breath trailer
The momentum created by rich git leveraging the dive is a catalyst for tension and stupid decision-making. Even if the character is poorly written, Alexander Arnold deserves credit for making Brett a completely despicable detached villain of the piece. He’s exploiting the weakness of Levi and Noah’s business to do what he wants, and if we’ve learned anything about arrogant rich people in the sea in recent years, it’s that some believe the laws of nature and physics don’t apply to them.
Soon, the four people are trapped in the wreckage. Running out of air and being chased by some seriously tense great white sharks.
The good stuff. Underwater scenes generally look great. Although using a different cinematographer this time around, director Joachim Hedén showed that this is his realm with 2020’s Breaking Surface. At his best, he conveys a sense of claustrophobia and panic as things get hairier. If it was more of a pocket disaster movie about them being trapped down there without the shark stuff, it might have done better. Because underwater scenes instill the belief that CG sharks don’t help conservation.
There are also some decent blasphemy effects with close-ups of torn flesh and cracks. But then again, they don’t mix so well with digital effects.
The rest of the performances are nothing special in general. It’s awful in some cases. This will hardly go down in the annals of Julian Sands’ great performances, but it’s hard not to think about his recent death when seeing him in a new film for possibly the last time. With this knowledge in mind, an emotional weight is attached to the sad old captain of the boat. However, this movie finds a way to undermine that with a frankly absurd and completely terrible final scene for his character.
Deep Sea Blues
And this leads us to evil. The Last Breath has all that underwater experience, but it seems to be lacking elsewhere. Each character is a slick cliché stereotype largely executed with a gusto reserved for redwood trees. Decision making is beyond stupid. Especially considering how much knowledge there had to be about what works and what doesn’t work underwater. Some really, really confusing choices that defy logic.
I think we should be at a point where if you’re going to make a killer shark, you have to pick a lane. Are you a Deep Blue Sea where your sharks have superpowers that allow you to break conventions? Or are you aiming for something a little more grounded? So many of these movies get stuck on the rocks between the two and become annoying. We know a lot more about sharks now than we did when Jaws came out. Making things about sharks is fine in the right narrative context, but do it with some consistency.
In The Last Breath, one minute, they use logic about what a shark can or can’t do. the next, they’re treated like a fish-faced Ghostface capable of dramatic entrances and coordinated planning. Combined with the disgusting CGI, it makes it hard to fear these toothy killers of the deep.
Inconsistency is the key word for this movie. At one point, a big deal is made about how little air a character has in his oxygen tank and how it would be nearly impossible to surface. Later, a character free dives for an absurd amount of time while being chased by a shark. Again, with so much knowledge available about underwater filming, it seems to contradict this.
Then we have the ending, which doesn’t really deliver the proper payoff and then closes with a tone-deaf ending for characters who have been hard to care about for the previous 90 minutes.
The Last Breath is a waste of great potential. There are the bones for an intense shark survival thriller here that gets bogged down by so many bad decisions. There are plenty of worse shark movies out there, but few are as disappointingly bad as this one.
Rating: 3/10
As ComingSoon’s review policy explains, a rating of 3 equals “Poor”. Due to important issues, this medium looks like a chore.
