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.

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"?

You know what, I didn't expect much with this film, especially after reading the one review that was up, but I was pleasantly surprised,

The acting was pretty good with the exception of Julian Sands awful accent.

If you like decent shark movies, this is for you. If you want a truly good shark movie, I recommend 'Shark Under Paris'. That was terrific. In french with subtitles.

This film, whilst not having the budget of 'Shark Under Paris' is a good, lower budget shark movie.

I love shark movies and will watch most of them, some are so bad even I can't watch them. Some are so bad they're almost good.

This one is definitely amongst the better shark moveis out there.

Another movie about dumb, smart people. At every turn, I turn into that black guy in the theater that's yelling "oh, come on!" Or "Get the f**k outta here!". Because one of these "geniuses" does something so stupid that it makes absolutely no sense. There's a couple people in this movie that from the beginning. I just kept thinking oh I hope they get eaten. Now. It's up to three. But, one down.

Personally, I think it's bad writing when somebody does absolutely everything right. Just as I believe it's bad writing when everybody does everything absolutely wrong. It's not realistic. I understand panicking under stressful situations but these characters did stupid stuff before they got into the situation. Which only complicated the situation it was just so predictively dumb.

My dad got me hooked on shark movies. I've seen them all, low budget, high budget no budget. Jaws will never be beat. Well My daddy is gone now but i still watch them. So it always amazes me that people are so surprised to see a shark in the ocean. They do live in the ocean correct? Cant stand the one guy, or the idiot, point of fact no one is tolerable. I watched this for Julian. I will say this shark movie took a new turn and headed to a sunken battleship. That was a nice new story. But yeah these people were so surprised about the sharks well we all know sharks don't live in the ocean right? What happened to men being men? Do people think nothing will go wrong? Movie is slow. Long time to see a shark. I'm not the type to quit or lay down and die and think people should be more like that. Been better to twist this around to a shockwaves theme. I am happy to say I think Julian went up on that mountain to die. I fully believe this. I do like the movie was dedicated to him.