Movie Review: BREATHE

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: April 25th, 2024 / 12:10 AM

BREATHE movie poster | ©2024 Capstone Pictures/Warner Bros.

Rating: PG-13
Stars: Jennifer Hudson, Milla Jovovich, Quvenzhané Wallis, Sam Worthington, Common, Raúl Castillo
Writer: Doug Simon
Director: Stefon Bristol
Distributor: Warner Bros./Capstone Pictures
Release Date: April 26, 2024 (theatrical/digital)

In BREATHE, it’s the year 2039 and, per onscreen titles the world has run out of oxygen, all plant life has died, and the planet is generally uninhabitable. In Brooklyn, New York, botanist Maya (Jennifer Hudson), her engineer/survivalist husband Darius (Common), and their fifteen-year-old daughter Zora (Quvenzhané Wallis), who is learning from both of them survive in an apartment.

Thanks to Darius’s forethought (his survivalist side) and ingenuity (his engineering side), the apartment has its own atmosphere, lights, refrigeration and security system. Maya is able to hydroponically grow plants inside the apartment, but the soil on the roof garden still fails to grow anything.

We learn from Zora’s narration that they’ve been here for three years, and have not seen any other people in that time. Darius goes off on a solo mission and does not return.

For five months, Maya and Zora are alone together, with Maya snapping and Zora rebelling in small ways. She continues to try to reach her father on a ham radio, telling him how things are going.

One day (about twenty-two minutes into BREATHE), there is banging on the outer door and a desperate plea for help. This is from Tess (Milla Jovovich), who is accompanied by Lucas (Sam Worthington).

Tess says that she worked with Darius. She and Lucas are from a small group of survivors in Pennsylvania, who are running out of oxygen. Tess believes Darius can help them rebuild the survivors’ oxygen system, but Darius isn’t here. Tess begs for a look at the device that he made for his family.

Maya doesn’t trust these people as far as she can throw them. Zora wants to give them the benefit of the doubt. Tess and Lucas don’t know whether Maya and Zora are dangerous to them. And here we go.

Once BREATHE is properly up and running, it picks up speed and tension. We understand why writer Doug Simon and director Stefon Bristol want us to get to know Maya and Zora and their parent/child dynamic. Hudson and Wallis are excellent and entirely credible, but when the viewer thinks they’ve signed up for a science-fiction thriller and we start off with what is essentially family drama, a little goes a long way.

When other characters show up, there are a lot of mysteries big and small to unpack, including who’s to be believed, what are everyone’s intentions, and how will people behave if they disagree with their allies?

BREATHE accelerates to the point where we are genuinely engaged by the third act, wondering how all of this can resolve. Jovovich and Worthington give committed performances.

We do have questions about exactly what is going on in terms of the atmosphere (there’s one shot that’s downright confusing). However, BREATHE is more about motivations that about technology, even if the tech in question looks relatively intriguing.

Another carp is that, in going for a PG-13 rating, the characters’ dialogue substitutions for some obvious words borders on the comical. There are moments where, if they can’t say what they clearly mean, perhaps the lines should have been omitted altogether.

Given that it has few interiors and exteriors that only stretch a block or two, BREATHE appears to have been made on a budget, but it doesn’t seem to lack anything it needs.

If viewers can hang in through the slow beginning, BREATHE provides dramatic rewards by its conclusion.

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