# Last Breath (2025 film)

Last Breath is a 2025 survival thriller film directed by Alex Parkinson and written by Parkinson, Mitchell LaFortune, and David Brooks. It stars Woody Harrelson, Simu Liu, Finn Cole, and Cliff Curtis. It is a feature film remake of the 2019 documentary that Parkinson co-directed with Richard da Costa, and follows a group of deep-sea divers who race to rescue a stranded teammate after an accident.
The film was theatrically released in the United States on 28 February 2025, by Focus Features and Entertainment Film Distributors, respectively. It received generally positive reviews from critics.

## Plot

Chris Lemons, Duncan Allcock, and David Yuasa are members of a team of saturation divers who work to maintain undersea gas lines in the North Sea. While on rotation, they and their fellow divers live onboard a vessel in pressurized chambers which simulate conditions similar to those found approximately 300 feet below sea level, the depth at which the divers work. The divers are transported to and from this chamber by a specialized diving bell, which is lowered to depth from the ship and allows the divers to remain at pressure for the entirety of their four-week work rotation.
During a deployment, Lemons and Yuasa exit the bell to begin work on an undersea gas line manifold, while Allcock remains stationed in the bell to monitor their status and distribute the umbilical lines that supply them with communication, power and oxygen.
Lemons and Yuasa navigate to the manifold and prepare to begin their work, but on the surface, their vessel’s Dynamic Positioning System (DPS) experiences a malfunction, causing the ship to begin drifting away from the work site. The bell is dragged along with Allcock still inside, and Lemons and Yuasa scramble to climb to the top of the manifold so that they will be unobstructed when they are also pulled along.
Yuasa successfully ascends the manifold, but Lemons’ umbilical runs out of slack before he can make it, causing the line to become entangled in the structure of the manifold. Yuasa, realizing that Lemons’ umbilical will snap in mere moments, tells Lemons to switch to his bailout air line, which will provide him with ten minutes of emergency oxygen. He promises to come back for Lemons, but tells him he must be on top of the manifold for Yuasa to be able to locate him. Moments later, the umbilical snaps, leaving Lemons behind with no air or means of communicating as Yuasa is dragged away by the bell still attached to the ship.
Meanwhile, in the ship’s wheelhouse, the crew look for solutions to the DPS’s malfunction. They are unable to drop anchor due to their proximity to various gas lines, as severing one would create an environmental catastrophe. With no other options, the captain and the first mate decide to manually operate the ship’s thrusters, preventing them from drifting further away from the work site while a third crew member works to bypass the reboot process for the DPS.
Yuasa makes it back to the bell and regroups with Allcock. In the wheelhouse, another member of the crew finds Lemons with an ROV. He is able to observe that Lemons is still alive, but has fallen unconscious and is showing symptoms of severe oxygen deprivation. He attempts to rescue Lemons with the ROV, but is unable to lift him as Lemons fastened himself to the manifold to avoid being lifted off of it by the tide.
The crew are able to reboot the DPS and rapidly make for the work site, at which point Yuasa is able to redeploy from the bell and rescue Lemons, whose oxygen ran out 29 minutes prior. Allcock brings Lemons aboard the bell and performs mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, after which Lemons begins breathing again. Yuasa reenters the bell, and he and Allcock both attempt to communicate with an unresponsive Lemons, who appears to have suffered severe brain damage as a result of prolonged oxygen deprivation. Just as the two divers begin to accept that they were too late, Lemons begins to speak and respond normally, at which point the bell returns to the ship.
The rotation is aborted and Lemons recuperates in the saturation chamber during the voyage home. Back at port, he parts ways with Allcock and Yuasa before journeying home and reuniting with his fiancée, revealing to her what happened.
In an epilogue, the audience is told that Lemons suffered no lasting mental or physical impairment as a result of the incident, with experts unable to explain the reasons for his survival. Lemons, alongside Yuasa and Allcock, returned to work three weeks later to finish the job he started.

## Cast

* Woody Harrelson as Duncan Allcock
* Simu Liu as David Yuasa
* Finn Cole as Chris Lemons
* Cliff Curtis as Captain Andre Jenson
* Mark Bonnar as Craig
* MyAnna Buring as Hanna
* Bobby Rainsbury as Morag, Chris' fiance
* Josef Altin as Mike

## Production

In May 2022, it was announced that Alex Parkinson was directing a narrative film remake of his 2019 documentary, with Woody Harrelson, Simu Liu and Djimon Hounsou cast to star.
Principal photography began in Malta in May 2023 with plans to run through July with Finn Cole joining the cast.
In May 2024, Focus Features acquired distribution rights to the film in territories including the U.S., France, Scandinavia, Australia, New Zealand, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea and Vietnam for $5 million, while FilmNation Entertainment co-financed the film and handled international sales.

## Release

Last Breath was first released in Greece on 27 February 2025, and was released in the United States on 28 February 2025. Social media analytics firm RelishMix reported that online marketing led to 37.2 million interactions across social media platforms, 60% behind the average for drama-thrillers. According to iSpot, Focus spent $5.1 million on linear TV advertising (comparatively, they spent $6.1 million on Conclave and twice as much on Nosferatu in 2024).

### Box office

In the United States and Canada, Last Breath was projected to gross $5–9 million from 3,011 theaters in its opening weekend. The film made $3 million on its first day, including an estimated $1 million from Thursday night previews. It went on to debut to $7.85 million, finishing second at the box office behind holdover Captain America: Brave New World. It made $4.1 million in its second weekend, a 47.8% drop to finish in third.

### Critical response

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 79% of 116 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.7/10. The website's consensus reads: "Ratcheting up the tension to a riveting degree, Last Breath tells a remarkable true story with the utmost efficiency and a dependably terrific performance from Woody Harrelson." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 66 out of 100, based on 31 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale, while PostTrak reported an average of 4.5 out of 5 stars from filmgoers, with 61% saying they would definitely recommend the film.
Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three out of four stars and wrote that the film "maintains a sense of suspense throughout, and delivers a powerful emotional impact in its final scenes."