Reviews
‘Last Breath’ Review – Based on a True Story Survival Thriller Won’t Leave You Breathless
The opening of Last Breath, a grim scene of a deep sea saturation diver spasming from oxygen deprivation at the bottom of the ocean, signals a nail-biting survival thriller ahead. That Last Breath is also based on the 2019 documentary of the same name, which in turn details the 2012 account of a major saturation diving accident in the North Sea, further suggests a gripping watch centered around a frantic rescue facing impossible odds. As the film then rewinds to establish the events that lead up to this harrowing scene, however, what should’ve been an intense, breathless scenario instead becomes flattened by its broad, detached documentarian approach to illuminating a rarely observed yet highly dangerous job.
Tenured divers Duncan Allcock (Woody Harrelson) and David Yuasa (Simu Liu) are teamed with relative newcomer Chris Lemons (Finn Cole) on a routine assignment to maintain a pipeline at the bottom of the ocean nearly 100 meters deep. Routine, in this instance, requires a lot of careful planning and preparation for all, including the ship captained by Jenson (Cliff Curtis) and 1st Officer Hanna (MyAnna Buring), who lowers the divers to extreme depths via diving bell. A freak power outage aboard the ship during high winds disrupts their standard procedure and leads to catastrophe, requiring all hands on deck to race against the clock and recover Chris when his umbilical cord is snapped, and he’s stranded below.
(l-r.) Finn Cole stars as Chris Lemons, Woody Harrelson as Duncan Allcock and Simu Liu as Dave Yuasa LAST BREATH, a Focus Features release.
Credit: Mark Cassar / © 2024 FOCUS FEATURES LLC
Director Alex Parkinson, who wrote and co-directed the 2019 doc, approaches his fictionalized vision with the same documentarian eye. Last Breath, despite drawing from a true account, gives a bird’s eye view rather than a personal entry point into an extreme survival tale. Screenwriters Mitchell LaFortune, Parkinson, and David Brooks give precedence to establishing the jargon and processes for the job itself, putting their characters on the periphery.
Liu’s David is stone-cold serious about the job, for good reason, but is employed solely as the muscle in rescue operations. Harrelson is sidelined for most of the film as the relaxed and playful diver so tenured that he’s facing a forced retirement, but this is a subplot that never amounts to anything nor contributes to the inert emotional center. As the diver trapped below, Cole’s Chris fares strongest with character development, with a worried fiancée at home to provide motivation, but there’s far too much intricate groundwork to cover with attempts to save his life to connect with any of the characters introduced, despite them being based on actual people. It’s as though Last Breath is reticent to deter too much from history and instead opts to paint this account in the broadest brushstrokes possible.
Woody Harrelson stars as Duncan Allcock in LAST BREATH, a Focus Features release.
Credit: Courtesy of Focus Features / © 2024 FOCUS FEATURES LLC
What Last Breath lacks in emotional depth, it makes up for in form and technique. The underwater photography by Ian Seabrook is stunning, capturing Chris’s plight with breathtaking clarity that induces Thalassophobia, especially in instances involving the eerie glow of a red flare. Parkinson also recreates the grainy camera footage that chronicled Chris’s shocking plight, raising the visual interest and injecting intense bursts of adrenaline when Chris’s predicament becomes more dire. But cutting to the sea’s surface to include the many moving parts of this risky rescue, particularly the moral dilemma of the ship’s crew, works against the mounting tension of the ticking clock situation.
Despite a few exhilarating moments of terrifying aquatic-based survival sequences, Last Breath mostly forgets its thriller elements. Instead, it wants to relay a remarkable human story in the face of insurmountable odds, but it gets so tangled in its technical details and big-picture storytelling that it forgets to inject life and leaves its cast mostly adrift with little to do. Last Breath won’t leave you breathless, but it does present an effective introduction to the perilous job of saturation diving.
Last Breath releases in theaters on February 28, 2025.
Reviews
‘Cape Fear’ Redefines A Cutthroat Classic & Turns The American Dream Into A Psychological Nightmare [Review]
Hollywood has been stuck in a trend where a recognizable property — any recognizable property — holds more value than an original idea. This has led to a trend where a slew of acclaimed films have transitioned over to television and become limited series, because why not?
Which has led to a very mixed bag of results that’s usually viewed as a hollow exercise in IP renewal that’s become a growing cliche that’s something to mock. Dead Ringers, Fatal Attraction, Presumed Innocent, and even The Birds are just some of the most recent titles in the movie-to-limited series pipeline. Admittedly, this formula can still work. It just needs to actually have not only a point of view, but a point, otherwise it’s destined to disappear into the vast streaming abyss.
Cape Fear definitely has a point of view and is well aware that it’s the fourth proper adaptation of this story — fifth if The Simpsons’ masterful “Cape Feare” parody is included. It’s an adaptation that’s not only aware of its past’s baggage, but intentionally embraces it and uses it to its advantage. Nick Antosca’s Cape Fear is so exciting because it functions as a remix of every version of this story — the ’60s film, Martin Scorsese’s ’90s remake, and John D. MacDonald’s original novel, The Executioners — to create this glorious amalgamation of the narrative. It’s not unlike what was done with Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal series and how it remixed the breadth of Thomas Harris’ works and their cinematic adaptations.
This approach is most effective when certain iconic scenes from the ’90s film are recontextualized and given to different characters in order to make grander thematic statements. It’s a really striking approach that reflects the generational ripples and overlap between these adaptations, yet it’s never distracting or ostentatious to anyone who is experiencing this story for the first time. It helps this series feel different from the deluge of forgettable adaptations that are flooding the market.
On paper, Antosca is the perfect showrunner to tell this story. He has an impressive body of work to pull from that includes horror series like Channel Zero, Hannibal, and Brand New Cherry Flavor, but also lots of true-crime titles like The Act, A Friend of the Family, and Candy. This series falls squarely within these two extremes as it blurs the lines between these genres and styles of horror storytelling. It’s Big Little Lies on bath salts. Cape Fear perhaps doesn’t need to exist, but it’s still a hell of a terrifying experience that has something timely to say.
Horror is full of stories in which one bad day is all it takes to break someone and turn them into a completely different person. Cape Fear isn’t doing exactly this. It’s more of a psychological waterboarding until the target’s sense of self is eroded to rubble. However, it takes the kernel of this idea and expands it onto the pristine ideal of the picturesque American family. It plays with the self-aware realization that the stories we tell are not necessarily what we think they are.
It’s a story about forgiveness, salvation, and revenge that blows up the Bowden family when a violent offender, Max Cady (Javier Bardem), is released from prison and systematically sets his sights on the people he holds accountable. Anna and Tom Bowden (Amy Adams and Patrick Wilson), the married couple who represented his case in court, receive a rude awakening when Cady’s psychological torture tour begins. Cape Fear, as a property, is most famously known for being the ultimate cat-and-mouse psychological thriller. This rendition culminates in such an explosive climax that’s right out of a slasher film.
Antosca was involved with an unproduced Friday the 13th reboot draft back in 2015, and there are certainly moments in which Max Cady moves with the hulking intensity of Jason Voorhees. So much of what makes all this work rests on Bardem’s complex performance. He’s very careful not to just copy Robert Mitchum or Robert De Niro’s versions of Cady, while he also taps into a terrifying intensity that feels completely different from what he brought forward with No Country for Old Men’s Anton Chigurh.
Apple TV’s new series also introduces a mental injury to Cady that adds psychological fractures that pull him between different versions of events as he struggles to grasp the truth. It’s an element that’s not exactly necessary and often feels like a convenient obstacle that can be activated whenever necessary. However, it allows for some creative visual flourishes and more opportunities for Bardem to get lost in Cady’s complexities.
Opposite Bardem’s Cady, Adams and Wilson do some of their best work as Anna and Tom. Anna is much more front and center than Tom, and Cape Fear is really Adams and Bardem’s time to shine. Wilson still does amazing, understated work, especially whenever the rug gets pulled out from under him regarding someone in his family. The visceral, brutal violence that Cady introduces to the Bowden family hits hard and highlights the anger and intensity that’s fundamental to this story.
What Cape Fear does best is its enlightening deconstruction of the ideal American family, how much work it takes to preserve such a pure thing, and the lengths that people go when they feel like the sanctity of this union is under fire. All it takes is for one of these foundational pillars to weaken before the whole unit becomes compromised. It moves the damage and pressure from one family member to the next as everyone struggles, and it’s unclear what will be left of this family when all is said and done.
This dynamic makes Cape Fear’s story so much more layered and interesting than if the series were just focused on Cady, Anna, and Tom, rather than making their children as much of a priority. Each member of the Bowden family experiences their own obstacles and arcs, although Natalie (Lily Collias) and Zack’s (Joe Anders) storylines are often the most grating. It all boils down to forgiveness, identity, and wanting to be perceived as the person we think we are, versus how we’re viewed by the public, and the dangerous dissonance that can exist between these separate selves.
These ideas are at their most potent when Cape Fear taps into the growing paranoia that bubbles up to the surface and becomes unbearable, so that even the littlest action is triggering. These moments are usually captured through a more erratic filming style that ramps up the tension for both the characters and the audience, unsure of what will strike and when.
Cape Fear never struggles to create uncomfortable setpieces where the anxiety just crescendos and hangs over the scene. On this note, the series’ musical score really captures the perfect aesthetic. It immediately evokes the suspenseful power of the previous Cape Fear films whenever Bernard Herrmann’s virtuosic original theme kicks in. It’s magic every single time.
Antosca delivers an exhilarating update to a classic thriller that pushes its source material to exciting, new places that justify its existence. It’s an exciting story that’s full of terrifying performances and cataclysmic consequences. Admittedly, Cape Fear could have been shortened to eight episodes rather than ten. There are a few plot threads that feel unnecessary and artificially expanded upon, but every episode is still an adrenaline-pumping experience.
If nothing else, it reminds audiences why Cape Fear is such an evergreen story that’s lasted the test of time and will continue to unnerve and get under the skin of whole new generations.
The 10-episode series will make its global debut on June 5 with a two-episode premiere on Apple TV, followed by new episodes every Friday through July 31, 2026.
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