Overview
A group of old college friends reunite on a Caribbean scuba diving trip exploring the wreckage of a WWII battleship and find themselves trapped inside the underwater labyrinth of rusted metal surrounded by great white sharks.
Opening with a reasonably spectacular sinking of the USS Charlotte during World War II, The Last Breath then shifts to current day where a pair of salvage operators, Noah (Jack Parr) and Levi (the late Julian Sands), a survivor of that sinking, uncover the wreck and plan to alert authorities to the location. Enter some old college friends of Noah who are all on holiday for a diving experience, with Brett (Alexander Arnold) offering to bail out Levi financially if Noah takes them secretly exploring the wreck. However, what they don’t know is that the wreck has become home to a family of sharks, and pretty soon they find themselves trapped in the wreckage with no safe way out, and running low on air.
The good news is that The Last Breath isn’t particularly long, and paces just well enough to serve as a diverting way to pass some time. However the whole product is extremely derivative, entirely predictable in setting up who will live and who will die, utilising far too familiar character types to offer any shocks, and is filled with some moments of such coincidental surprise that it makes the shark appearances even more preposterous. You see, these sharks appear to be not only super fast when on screen, but have the ability to randomly teleport when off screen to appear wherever the peril is required. Whilst the shark attacks themselves are decently handled, with a good balance of practical and CGI effects, the tension that such a claustrophobic setting should offer is sadly vacant. With their breath running out, and the darkened passageways of the sunken wreck around them, this should be nail biting alone even without the sharks, but instead convenient air pockets ensure the group never seem to be in much risk of asphyxiation, and instead the reliance on the CGI sharks is pushed.
It also doesn’t help that the diving suits worn by the group don’t really allow you to work out who is who, with only a small number of face shots to identify the individuals. When attacks happen, you just have to wait until it settles down to count off who is still alive, yet strangely not really caring for anyone anyway. In fact, the only character I found myself caring for was Levi, who remains on the boat for the majority of the film, and we sadly don’t spend enough time with the grizzled sea captain who spends his time knitting.
The Last Breath is just another lazy entry into the shark film genre, offering nothing of note, but may be worth checking out if, like me, you just have a strange fascination for even the worst of shark attack tales. It is also certainly worth checking out to see the final performance of Julian Sands.