BREATHE (2024)

Studio:   Warner Bros.
Director: Stefon Bristol
Writer:   Doug Simon
Producer: Basil Iwanyk, Erica Lee, Christian Mercuri, David Haring
Stars:    Jennifer Hudson, Milla Jovovich, Quvenzhane Wallis, Raul Castillo, Common, Sam Worthington

Review Score:

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Summary:

With lowered oxygen levels making the outside world uninhabitable, a bunkered mother and daughter must decide to defend against or ally with two strangers who claim to know their missing family member.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

In 2039, four years after an ecological collapse rendered plant-life nonexistent and the outside world uninhabitable due to depleted oxygen levels, engineer and survivalist Darius Houston continues to live with his father Mike, his horticulturist wife Maya, and their brilliant 16-year-old daughter Zora inside a bunker he built in Brooklyn, New York, with an oxygen generator he designed. After Mike dies accidentally during a supply run, Darius ventures outside alone, supposedly to bury his father's body in Prospect Park, but he does not return.

Five months after Darius's disappearance, supposed siblings Tess and Lucas come to the bunker. Able to name everyone in the Houston family, Tess claims she worked with Darius at Temple University, although Maya questions Tess's identity. Tess goes on to say she and Lucas are from a fallout shelter 100 miles away in Philadelphia, and she needs to examine Darius's O2 generator so she can repair a failing oxygen generator before the 25 people in the Philly bunker die. Unaware that other people survived the catastrophe in 2035, Maya remains suspicious of Tess while Zora insists on helping the strangers.

Amid armed negotiations, a man named Micah suddenly rushes Maya. In the ensuing chaos, Micah ends up in the bunker with Maya and Zora while Tess and Lucas remain locked outside. Micah tries to calm Maya by saying he was Tess and Lucas's lookout, and he merely misunderstood the situation when it appeared as though Maya was taking Tess and Lucas hostage.

With Maya still warning Zora that Tess cannot be trusted, Tess continues contending she is telling the truth, yet Tess also threatens to get to the oxygen generator no matter what. Disagreeing with Tess's initial strategy, Lucas goes rogue by starting to sabotage the bunker's air and electric systems.

After Maya goes back outside to engage Tess and Lucas in a firefight, Micah subdues Zora at gunpoint before tying her up. Micah soon drops dead from injuries sustained in the earlier commotion, however, leaving Zora helpless.

Lucas captures Maya at gunpoint with the intention of exchanging her in return for Zora letting him and Tess inside the bunker. Zora tells them what happened with Micah, revealing there is no one physically able to open the bunker door from inside.

Maya proposes retrieving a spare keycard from Prospect Park. Tess leaves Lucas behind in case Zora escapes while she escorts Maya at gunpoint in an electric vehicle.

While driving, Maya confesses to Tess that when Darius left the bunker, he left behind a message revealing a miscalculation proved his system was pushing too hard and would eventually fail. Recognizing it could sustain two people longer than three, Darius sacrificed himself with the idea that Zora would have more time to fix the oxygen generator before it was too late. Maya adds that she never revealed Darius's presumed death to Zora, who still holds out hope of finding her father.

In Prospect Park, Maya grieves upon finding Darius's dead body. Maya recovers the spare bunker key, but the car's battery dies.

Tess convinces Maya that due to an injury she suffered during their previous gunfight, Maya would never make it back to the bunker on foot. Maya makes Tess promise to protect Zora before turning over the key. Tess vows to try to come back for Maya.

Tess returns to Lucas, who joins her in entering the bunker. Tess tells Zora what Maya revealed about her father's fate, but Zora wonders if Tess killed both of her parents. Tess insists she needs to go back for Maya, but Lucas forces her to examine the oxygen generator first.

Tess discovers that Darius's generator is too complicated for her to replicate, which infuriates Lucas. Tess further admits she never actually knew Darius, but rather, she intercepted all the information about the Houston family from radio broadcasts Zora had been sending in hopes of finding her father. Feeling like she betrayed their fellow survivors by promising something she could not deliver, and for endangering Lucas and Micah as her escorts, Lucas shoots Tess dead.

The next morning, Maya uses sunlight to recharge the electric car through its solar panels. Back at the bunker, Lucas sends Zora outside to investigate an apparent system malfunction. There, Zora reunites with her mother, who apologizes for withholding the truth about Zora's father. Zora explains what happened with Tess and what Tess revealed. Together, Maya and Zora team up against Lucas, who ultimately kills himself in an explosion caused by firing his gun during an oxygen overload.

With their Brooklyn bunker destroyed, Maya and Zora use the EV to travel to the fallout shelter in Philadelphia where Tess, Lucas, and Micah came from. Maya and Zora collapse from low oxygen outside, but they recover inside after being rescued by the other survivors. Upon regaining consciousness, Maya learns Zora already repaired the shelter's malfunctioning oxygen generator by adapting her father's design.

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Review:

T.S. Eliot wrote the famous line, "This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper," in 1925. Had he written those words 100 years later, he might have been talking about "Breathe," a tatty thriller that illustrates what such a whimper might look like, if the apocalypse had a budget that couldn't afford more than three items on a fast-food value menu.

In 2035, an environmental collapse rendered the outside world uninhabitable due to depleted oxygen levels. Luckily for Darius Houston, he was a doomsday prepper in addition to being a brilliant engineer. After designing an experimental O2 generator, Darius built a bunker in Brooklyn where he retreated with his father, his wife Maya, and their daughter Zora while the majority of the world's population presumably died.

Four years later, Darius disappears following his dad's accidental death. Five months after that, Maya and Zora receive an unexpected visit from two strangers, the first humans they've encountered since society crumbled.

Tess and Lucas claim to be siblings from a fallout shelter in Philadelphia. Tess supposedly worked with Darius at Temple University, except Maya doesn't recognize Tess as one of her husband's former colleagues. The Philly bunker has an oxygen generator too, but it's on its last legs. If Tess can't get inside Maya and Zora's bunker to examine Darius's device, she won't be able to fix her similar unit, and 25 other survivors, including nine children, will die along with her and Lucas.

16-year-old Zora's immediate instinct is to be the Samaritan her father raised her to be. Maya isn't so sure Tess and Lucas can be trusted. After all, why did they bring weapons, and why do some parts of their story sound suspicious? What happens next is a series of confrontational conversations, physical fights, and back-and-forth battling as the two sides struggle to survive their somewhat suspenseful standoff.

"Breathe's" dystopian setting isn't so bad. What is bad is how the film goes about depicting it, which is by doing little more than overexposing exterior footage while baking everything in an ugly orange hue. The CGI equivalent of static matte paintings poorly depicts a couple of skylines reduced to rubble. But much of the movie takes place in what looks like an average alleyway, with random rocks, broken debris, and stripped-for-parts vehicles strewn about for some reason. When did people dying of asphyxiation have time to turn the world into a junkyard?

The film's low-energy first act follows Maya and Zora as the duo does dull activities like fixing their hair, listening to music, and spanking a spoon on a bowl because the actors seemingly can't find any better actions to occupy their idle hands. When they do venture outside, Maya and Zora wear ordinary sweatshirts and $5 utility gloves with their oxygen masks. I'm not saying they shouldn't dress for comfort within their dying world. But maybe a movie could better sell viewers on a post-apocalyptic fantasy if its characters looked cooler than two nobodies collecting aluminum cans from a dumpster.

Although the backdrop is distractingly blah, "Breathe" manages to build a moderate amount of initial tension through Milla Jovovich's performance as Tess. Jovovich's onscreen personality plays perfectly as a sketchy survivor who could be an earnest hero, conniving villain, or someone in between. Her breathless desperation is as convincing as her commitment to being cutthroat when pleading negotiations turn into gritty gunplay. It's hard to get a real read on Tess's true intentions, making Jovovich the sole standout among a cast of mid-level names who appear to be on autopilot. Yet even she isn't nearly enough to make "Breathe's" 90-minute endurance test worthwhile, especially when she's unfortunately paired with Sam Worthington, an actor AI might generate if the user input "generic leading man."

Having Jovovich, Worthington, Jennifer Hudson, and Common on the roster is undoubtedly how producers funded this movie, which seems more interested in being a little New York love letter, with lame gags like a banner declaring the Knicks the 2035 NBA champs, than a big drama capable of competing with similar wasteland scenarios. If one or two of the four main stars had been sacrificed for lesser-known actors, maybe what was saved in salary could have gone toward polishing the production to look better than every other gigabyte of negligible data collecting digital dust on a streaming server somewhere.

Review Score: 40

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