The best true-story survival movies have a way of captivating audiences and making them wonder what they would do and how they would react to similar dire situations. Moviegoers will get the chance to do that when Last Breath — starring Woody Harrelson, Simu Liu and Finn Cole — hits the 2025 movie calendar February 28. Critics have had the opportunity to screen the film ahead of its release, and their opinions are split on how suspenseful it actually is.
Last Breath is the remake of a 2019 documentary of the same name by the same director, Alex Parkinson, and it tells the harrowing story of the three saturation divers who run into trouble 300 feet below the surface when a storm causes their positioning system to fail and Chris Lemons’ (Finn Cole) tether to the vessel is severed. As terrifying as that scenario sounds, Eric Eisenberg says in CinemaBlend’s review of Last Breath the tension fails to translate to the screen. He gives the “shockingly boring” movie 2 out of 5 stars, writing:
I’m left imagining that the feature adaptation must hone extremely close to the facts, as it’s the only logical excuse for why the new film is as dull as it is. It features some extremely talented actors in key roles, but their personalities never evolve beyond tropes, and the film is wholly lacking in compelling narrative developments after the inciting incident. Last Breath thankfully doesn’t overplay its hand, its final cut being a brisk 93 minutes, but it’s not an entertaining way to spend an hour-and-a-half.
Gregory Nussen of Deadline agrees that the film lacks urgency, saying that as astonishing as Chris Lemons’ survival is, the narrative telling of it is lacking in almost every way. Nussen writes:
The film’s tension is almost immediately diffused by a slavish devotion to the facts. The documentary delays information about Lemons until its final act; its narrative equivalent is confusingly told in egalitarian real-time, almost as if anticipating an audience whose patience cannot be tested. It doesn’t help that the dialogue is rote and persistently worthy of an eye-roll, replete as it is with devotion to teammates and camaraderie in the face of unprecedented adversity, or that nearly every second of the film’s runtime is leaden with saccharine scoring — an exhausting swell of orchestral music that never lets us forget for even a second just how majestic this moment is supposed to feel.
IndieWire’s David Ehrlich says there’s not much depth to the Last Breath, and it’s creatively redundant, with its 2019 documentary. However, as a “simple but suspenseful” genre exercise, it works because some situations are so unbelievable they belong in a Hollywood script. He grades it a B- and says:
There may not be a lot going on under the surface, so to speak, but Last Breath — always effectively stressful when it needs to be — does a fine job of conveying just how miraculous it would be for anyone to survive this ordeal. It feels like the kind of thing that would only be possible in the movies, and the kind of thing you only believe could be possible because you’re watching one.
Indeed, some critics got exactly what they wanted out of the survival flick. Emma Stefansky of IGN rates Last Breath a “Great” 8 out of 10, writing that it’s full of inspiring moments of human endurance, made only better by the fact that it’s a true story about a fascinatingly tough job. Stefansky continues:
Last Breath is just as wild and tense as you’d expect from a movie starring Woody Harrelson, Finn Cole, and Simu Liu as saturation divers determined to risk their lives after one of their own becomes marooned at the bottom of the ocean. A capably directed true-story disaster movie with a cast willing to squeeze themselves inside deep-sea diving suits, it’s helped by the knowledge that everything you’re seeing actually happened, and the inherent fascination from watching people work terrible, impossible jobs. In spite of all of its nail-biting close calls and harrowing footage from the actual rescue, it’s actually a lot of fun.
Mae Abdulbaki of ScreenRant couldn’t look away from this “gritty, grounded thriller,” praising the way it trusts the audience to engage in its humble storytelling without glitzy action sequences. The critic was on the edge of her seat the whole time and also gives the movie an 8 out of 10, writing:
Perhaps surprisingly, Last Breath may be the most suspenseful movie of the year. You might see the trailer and want to overlook it, but it’s a solid film with nail-bitingly stressful moments. It’ll definitely fill the gap left behind by so many lackluster thrillers. It works on several levels and, while I wanted just a tad more character interactions between the main trio, I was locked into the film the entire way through. Last Breath is a good example of back-to-basics filmmaking that zeroes in on what works without overstaying its welcome or losing momentum.
It seems the critics agree that the divers’ tale and efforts to rescue Chris Lemons are worthy of being told, but they don’t necessarily agree on how well Last Breath accomplishes its goal of roping audiences in. If this story sounds like one you want to hear more about, the movie hits theaters on Friday, February 28.
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