The Last Breath

As diver/filmmaker Christian Wehrle recently explained to Eye For Film, exploring shipwrecks is always dangerous. There can be all sorts of hidden hazards, especially in old military vessels, and it’s also easy to get caught on things and trapped. Touring a broken-up, open wreck in shallow water where there’s lots of light is okay for most people with a bit of training and a good guide, but tunnelling down into an intact wreck with has never been explored before, beneath the sand, not so much. And that’s even without sharks.

We have our first encounter with the sharks in this film’s prologue, in 1944, when the USS Charlotte is torpedoed off the British Virgin Islands by night and soldiers are left struggling in the water for the piscine predators to finish off. When we enter the modern world, fresh and bright with gentle music and a calm sea, there’s no sign of them. A man relaxes on the deck of a boat, doing his knitting in the company of a pet cockatoo. This is Levi – played, in one of his final screen appearances, by Julian Sands.

Levi is in touch, by radio, with a young diver, Noah (Jack Parr). He’s about to see the culmination of a lifetime’s ambition when Noah discovers the wreck of the Charlotte. There are some scary moments down there in the shadows when the radio cuts out, but we can of course feel fairly confident that Noah is going to be okay – for the meantime at least – because why would a shark settle for snacking on one young person when it could have a whole bunch of them?

Needless to say, it just so happens that a posse of Noah’s dearest friends are about to visit him, including his ex, Sam (Kim Spearman) and obnoxious wide boy Brett (Alexander Arnold). Upon hearing that the Charlotte has been discovered but not yet reported, the latter, who loves the idea of being the first to get there, offers Noah and Levi a large sum of money to take them down there. Saddled as they are with debts, they reluctantly agree. Everyone in the group is supposedly a trained diver, after all, and Noah sets out strict rules to keep them safe. Of course, these are all broken before the film is even halfway through.

Pushing low on air, getting panicky, even drinking alcohol (whose effects, as aircraft passengers will know, vary as pressure changes) – the protagonists take all manner of stupid risks. They’re lucky to find air pockets within the vessel where they can rest. But once the sharks enter the picture, things begin to look very bad indeed. Getting back to the surface – never mind reaching the boat where Levi is waiting, blissfully unaware of their predicament – is going to take all of their cunning (not exactly in plentiful supply) and a good measure of luck.

There are a few interesting decisions here. These sharks behave more like the real thing, curious to begin with, observing and then swooping in for test bites rather than going straight for the kill. Having people maimed rather than immediately eaten complicates the decisions facing the group. Sam is a doctor and there are old medical supplies on board, so it’s possible for her to keep some of the injuries from becoming immediately fatal, but not to keep them from smelling strongly of blood. There’s also a nod to realism in that the divers recognise that rushing up to the surface all in one go would likely result in death from the bends. If they can escape the wreck, they will be obliged to pause and rest in open water.

This isn’t director Joachim Hedén’s first venture into underwater thrillers and he handles it with confidence, choosing shots which continually remind us that this is the sharks’ world, with the humans mere interlopers. Overall, though, there’s not much to make it stand out from the mass of similar features out there, and more interesting character dynamics and ultimately given short shrift in favour of over-familiar ones which do nothing to enrich the story. There are some effective scary moments but not much that will stay with you.