1 out of 5

Directed by: Stefon Bristol

I hope that I give credit where it’s due when it comes to movies, as it’s a craft that, regardless of how much behind-the-scenes content I intake, I’ll never fully understand without having been involved in such an endeavor. What it takes for such projects, of any size, to happen in the first place is often wild – whether you want to look at it from a studio or indie perspective, any era – not to mention all the unpredictables of cast and crew mashed together, and then what can take place with editing, and testing, and fiddling after-the-fact. So I try to remain humble, and recognize: it’s a tough job.

Still, that credit must only extend so far. What I would charitably say about Breathe is that it takes (what I assume to be) a small budget and fairly spreads it out across key sets, and smartly doesn’t waste shots on effects that can’t passably be rendered to get a point across. And though it’s not exactly a novel premise – a home invasion story set in a post-apocalypse-y setting has been spun up in various sci-fi / horror tales before – there are some tweaks to the concept which suggest maybe what people saw in the script to have put it on a 2019 black list (here’s where wiki links to for that citation).

…But both of those “credits” feel like I’m stretching, because there are a lot of caveats. That a fair amount of quality actors were gathered, and that neither the by-the-books home invasion story or the tweaks added to the story, merit any moments of tension is maybe all you need to know. “Breathe” is one of those movies that’s not exactly bad, but it also never meets or exceeds a kind of baseline – the one where we ask a movie to entertain us.

At some point in the not distant future – and actually, we get a sorta date on that point, but I’ll circle back around to that in the moment – the planet has nearly zeroed out on its oxygen supply. We focus on a mother (Jennifer Hudson), father (Common) and daughter (Quvenzhané Wallis) family who have managed to shore up a bunker for survival, thanks to super botanist mom – maintaining some plant life – and super scientist dad, who’s got some kind of oxygen generator going. Events require dad to go on a journey, so he straps on his O2 tank, and a helpful voiceover from daughter lets us know that’s the last we’ll ever see of him.

(Such comments can either build tension for events to come, or act as a kind of lazy narrative shorthand to get us through a prologue. Based on my previous comments, I’ll let you suppose which this is.)

Flash forward to mother and daughter surviving, when some Mad Max types – played by Milla Jovovich and Sam Worthington – come knocking at their super secure no-one’s-getting-through-here door, with the duo alternating between a story about needing to replicate the family’s oxygen generator for their own encampment, and also making threatening, open-ended statements while wielding bats and guns.

The bulk of the story is the “escalating” standoff between mother and daughter and this duo. But yeah, I put that in quotes because the script never sells any of this. The family are all vague sketches of characters, and the film relies on some cheesy flashback tropes to drum up some tears, which wholly suggest that the entire world went to shit within the time of the (15 year old?) daughter’s life – the flashbacks feature the whole family, and the world is okey-dokey – which, I’m not a scientist, maybe isn’t impossible, but ends up feeling like an editing flub that they just shrugged and left in. Perhaps with some more conversation on what happened it could be dumb justified, but the story is just not interested in going there. …Now apply this approach to everything: apply it to Milla’s and Sam’s “backstory;” apply it to the bond between mother and daughter, which is sitcom-level shallow; and apply it to the direction of all of these actors, who – Worthington included – can be competent at minimum, and sometimes great, and it often sounds like we’re at a table read, trying out a tone for each line. Sometimes actors are in much more serious versions of this; sometimes they’re in quippy versions of it. And I’ll step into tricky territory and poke at what feels like some very out of place moments to remind the viewers that the core family is black, like director Stefon Bristol was worried that anyone who followed him from his Spike Lee produced debut may be disappointed. (I recognize I could be way out over my skis with this comment, but some dialogue along these lines seemed like it was tacked on after the fact.)

Breathe just can’t satisfy on any level. For low budget sci-fi, its premise isn’t deep enough; for a thriller, it’s lacking stakes; and just for a cheapy distraction, the tone and pace never really settle into a groove.