Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Breathe’ on Paramount+, Bare-Bones Post-Apocalyptic Sci-fi Movie Pitting Milla Jovovich vs. Jennifer Hudson

Breathe (now streaming on Paramount+) is a cheapo post-apocalyptic sci-fi outing set IN A WORLD where the oxygen is thin and the characters are thinner. Directed by Stefon Bristol (See You Yesterday), the film keeps the setting tight and the budget tighter, casting genre stalwart Milla Jovovich as a stranger who may or may not be trusted by a survivalist family, led by Jennifer Hudson, who isn’t quite so sure if they should share their air. Sometimes small-scale sci-fi can be a tidy display of thoughtful ideas; sometimes they just regurgitate stuff we’ve already seen before. Let’s find out which camp Breathe falls into.

BREATHE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: BROOKLYN, 2039. EVERYBODY’S DEAD. Well, not everybody. One family survives on a sunbeaten Earth where the oxygen levels plummeted, killing plantlife and most of humanity. “They” called Darius (Common) a nut for being overly prepared for the apocalypse, but “They” are all desiccated husks now. And so he and his wife Maya (Hudson) and teenage daughter Zora (Quvenzhane Wallis) live in a cozy bunker with electricity, an airlock, a solar-powered machine that generates oxygen, lots of cans of soup, a mini greenhouse (it helps that Maya is a botanist!) and a quality selection of John Coltrane – on vinyl even. They also have oxygen tanks and masks so they can venture outside the bunker if needed. The world out there is so yellow-bleached and barren, you almost expect WALL-E to tap on the door, asking for a cup of sugar.

The plot contrives to send Darius away for months, leaving Maya and Zora alone to bicker, and then face a serious Plot Development, in the form of a less friendly visitor than WALL-E. There’s two of them, to be precise – Tess (Jovovich) and Lucas (Sam Worthington). Tess says she knew Darius from way back, and just wants to check out the oxygen generator so she can fix her own, back in a bunker in Philly. Children’s lives are at stake, she pleads through an intercom. Won’t SOMEBODY think of the CHILDREN? 

The question here is whether Tess and Lucas can be trusted. In this economy? Hardly! Anyone who’s lived through an apocalypse knows that it makes people crazy and unreasonable, more likely to kill ya than help ya. And while Tess seems sincere, that Lucas guy is a bit of a loose nut. They’re armed, because they have to be, and the same goes for Tess and Zora. And anyone who’s been around guns knows that they make people crazy and unreasonable, more likely to kill ya than help ya. Inevitably, complications ensue, and whether we’re engaged with any of this or not – the latter seems depressingly probable – we can at least come to the conclusion that apocalypses and guns, and any combinations thereof, are no good.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Breathe is WALL-E meets The Road meets the siege sequence in The Two Towers, except with four people instead of, like, 40,000. Also, shout out to Common’s other post-apocalyptic sci-fi outing, the series Silo, which uses a similar setting to generate significantly stronger and more original drama. 

Performance Worth Watching: Let’s just remember nine-year-old Wallis landing an Oscar nod for Beasts of the Southern Wild and move on.

Memorable Dialogue: Zora delivers this doozy: “You ever heard of the Hindenburg, bitch? You shoot us, we all die! One spark and the whole place is on fire!”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: I think the core idea in Breathe beyond hey, suffocating is bad is the notion that trust is already fragile even without being recontextualized within a destroyed world. But that’s a generous reading of a film that seems content to follow through with cliches rather than work past or around them. The screenplay mirrors its wasteland setting, giving a capable and talented cast little to work with, the dialogue as off-the-rack as the visuals which, when not limited in scope, are mired by chintzy CGI. Granted, not every movie enjoys a nine-figure budget, but this dollar-store material doesn’t deserve more than dollar-store execution. 

One senses Bristol doing the best he can with a (painfully prevalent) lack of resources. But he exhibits a lack of control that puts the picture into a third-act tailspin: The director appears to mistake amplifying hysteria for building tension. Worthington indulges his character’s hidden psychopath, eating scenery in a manner that’s more annoying than entertaining. The bunker’s computer employs a female-voiced warning system that rarely shuts up, bleating its dire countdowns atop increasingly hectic action, which devolves into logic-deprived chaos during key climactic moments. For a movie that’s so thematically stripped-down, we shouldn’t be confused and wondering what the hell just happened, and how, and why. Just as the lack of air will kill a person, the lack of sense will kill a movie.

Our Call: *Gasp* SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.