The Last Breath

A group of college friends reunite for a Caribbean scuba diving adventure, exploring a sunken WWII battleship. However, they become trapped in the rusted underwater maze, with great white sharks at every turn.

Joachim Heden delivers a watchable shark tale, but don't expect the likes of The Shallows, 47 Meters Down, The Reef, Open Water, or even Shark Bait, to name a few.

Andrew Prendergast and Nick Saltrese's script is talky for the first half hour, with the usual setup tropes: friends having a good time, water-shark-kill. It's drawn out, but Heden offers some tense moments in the third act, where the digital sharks look on form. The CGI is a mixed bag, at times very convincing. While not as well executed, the underwater settings are at times reminiscent of Mako (2021) and Deep Fear (2023).

There's a lot of reflection with the characters, and the melancholiness matches the odd whimsical soundtrack. Actress Kim Spearman is notable and does a great job with what she's given. Jack Parr has screen presence and is likable and memorable. The film is dedicated to the late Julian Sands, and it's a pity this is one of his posthumous films. Still, in his brief role, he acts the chops off it.

Overall, it's better than The Requin (2022) and countless other low-budget shark films out there.

Every summer, as sure as there will be lazy days at the beach, there will undoubtedly be a shark movie. This year sees a couple, including The Last Breath. Every shark movie since 1975 owes a bucket of chum to Jaws. Whether intentional or not, every movie where a dorsal breaks the surface pays homage to the original fish tale. Jaws is sublime, and its effectiveness lies more in the interest of characterization than waiting for a mechanical monster to pop up. The flaw in most shark films post-Jaws is uninteresting characters and the emphasis on cheap thrills. The Last Breath rides this flaccid wave. The film merely treads water enough to remind audiences that they could instead watch Jaws.

Full Review at Geek Vibes Nation.

When I stumbled upon this 2024 movie, I didn't know what I was in for. All I knew was that it was a new shark-themed movie that I hadn't seen, and thus I opted to sit down and watch it. Yeah, I do have a thing for shark movies, despite the vast majority of them being questionable affairs.

And imagine my surprise when I saw that this movie has Julian Sands on the cast list. He has always been one of my favorite actors, and it was quite a nice surprise to get to sit down and watch this last movie that he starred in. And knowing that he will not be making more movies, sort of made it a bit of an emotional affair to see him on the screen.

Writers Andrew Prendergast and Nick Saltrese put together an enjoyable and entertaining storyline. It was a pretty straightforward storyline, so you can essentially just lean back and watch the action on the screen whilst munching on some snacks. I like the concept of the storyline, which takes your average generic shark-themed storyline and adds a twist to it. I have to say that I was genuinely entertained throughout the course of the movie.

The acting performances in the movie were good. The only performer that I was familiar with on the cast list was Julian Sands. It should be noted, though, that they had a good ensemble of actors and actresses for the roles, and they performed well.

Visually then the movie was good. It wasn't the type of shark movie that make usage of stock footage of sharks swimming around, and that spoke well in favor of the movie. The sharks looks real and moves realistic, adding a lot to the overall enjoyment of the movie.

If you enjoy shark movies, like I do, then "The Last Breath" is definitely well-worth sitting down and watching. I was genuinely entertained throughout the course of the 96 minutes that the movie ran for, and it is a movie that I warmly recommend you to sit down and watch.

My rating of director Joachim Hedén's 2024 movie "The Last Breath" lands on a six out of ten stars.

A ship during the world war 2 sinks and decades later, it is found in the present day Noah and old Levi. They are happy about the fortune they are going to make after their discovery. They are accompanied by Noah's old friends for a dive to the shipwreck. Sounds adventurous? No. Add sharks, plural and it immediately becomes adventurous. With the human characters making enough dumb choices and the lazy sharks allowing them to, who will eventually survive the sharks attack, forms rest of the story.

The sharks are entirely CGI and there is nothing much fun about them. Those scenes, be it the build up or the actual scene, they remain bland throughout. The typecasted characters, a couple of brats, the typical female lead, her ex who is humiliated by the brats and the fact that they are all easy baits. Despite the film starting off with a flashback and jumping into present day, it's two different set of characters and before getting used to any of them, the story moves forward with the bunch of friends joining and none of them are worth rooting for. With the short runtime and enough kills, The Last Breath still doesn't make the cut for a passable shark film.

When the long-hidden wreck of the battleship "USS Charlotte" is discovered, it proves a must-explore opportunity for a visiting collection of erstwhile college students. Initially, "Noah" (Jack Parr) isn't keen on taking them all, but when he discovers that his local bar-owning mate "Levi" (Julian Sands) is $36k in the hole, he teases the the cash from the arrogant ass that is "Brett" (Alexander Arnold) and so down they go. Initially, all goes well enough but you have to remember that a battleship is a large construction with loads of corridors, ladders, portholes and especially with this one - rust. As this entitled and hungover bunch of travellers enter deeper into the infrastructure, they also meet a problem a little more menacing. Sharks like it down there too, and they are hungry for some rubbery frat sandwiches. What with a maze of collapsing ironworks, the odd dead body and now these marauding man/woman eating fish, we are set for quite an underwater adventure full of squealing and screaming with acting and dialogue that had me wanting to sign up for my local adopt-an-elasmobranch society. The photography works quite well and it does generate a little tension, but the rest of it just hammy comic book stuff where the cast deserve all the chewing they get. The sparingly featured Julian Sands must have fancied a free holiday somewhere warm, else he had a tax bill to settle - otherwise this is entirely forgettable fayre that we've all seen before and won't need to see again. Perhaps it should have been entitled "The Last Gasp"?