Science fiction is often a genre that is complemented by social critique. After all, what better way to rip apart where we’ve been than looking forward to where we may be going? Currently in theatres is the alpha prime of big swing social sci-fi: the latest instalment of the Planet of the Apes franchise, Kingdom of the… Over the course of ten films, they’ve tackled slavery, evolution, nuclear annihilation, workers’ rights, CIA corruption and the rise of fascism, each in their own confident, defiantly individual ways. It’s easy to see their success is facilitated by big budgets and bleeding edge tech, but there’s no reason to assume smaller sci-fi films can’t have the same sociopolitical impact. Take Stefon Bristol’s Breathe, a small-scale post-apocalyptic thriller surprisingly loaded with stars and a stoking fire in its heart about the ongoing struggle of the Black American experience. The film’s script (penned by Doug Simon) sat on the Blacklist for Hollywood’s best unproduced screenplays during 2022, and thus attracted a small whirlwind of talent around it in the process. A film like this could spark a debate with its fusion of a climate-conscious concept and a finger on the racial pulse of the USA, and off the back of his sparky time-travelling Netflix Original, See You Yesterday, this is Bristol’s prime opportunity to be an exciting new voice for the genre.
His ruinous sophomore sees a mysterious cataclysm having left Earth without a breathable atmosphere, eliminating all plant life and making breathing without a an oxygen tank impossible. We open with an African American family living in an airtight bunker in Flatbush, NY; father Darius (Common) and mother Maya (Jennifer Hudson) have worked hard on a fragile ecosystem below ground, made all the more difficult by the raging adolescence of daughter Zora (Quvenzhané Wallis). But when Darius goes missing and two new suspicious survivors (Milla Jovovich and Sam Worthington) come a-knocking, it’s up to this fractured family to band together and protect their little slice of the world one breath at a time.
Paths trodden by Trey Edward Schults’ It Comes at Night and (more recently) Sam Esmail’s Leave the World Behind may leave viewers with a sense of familiarity here, as Breathe works from the same moment-to-moment logistics of mistrust and misunderstanding. Coupled with a colour palette so orange it makes Mad Max: Fury Road look like it has a Vitamin D deficiency, it’s clear Bristol is a filmmaker who knows what he likes and where he’s cribbing from. In terms of design, the low budget actually works in favour of the film as a whole. There’s no impressive power suits with high-tech displays and unlimited oxygen, no grand design interiors that push a new hyper-modern world in your face; just ordinary people who have cobbled together bits and pieces to scratch out a living in the eerily near-future. The exteriors range from dusty scrap heaps to crumbling cityscapes, the latter of which look as detailed and uncanny as any matte painting backdrop popular in the 60s or 70s. Breathe is a fine achievement for a film that has clearly spent the majority of its modest budget on an Oscar winner (Hudson), an Oscar nominee (Wallis), two leads of massive franchises (Jovovich and Worthington) and an underrated action star (Common), so the real question is if there’s enough on the page to warrant the talents of five performers of this calibre.
It’s the type of role that makes you wish he had a bigger career outside of James Cameron’s obscenely expensive Avatar movies, as he’s perfectly capable of significantly livening up DTV fare like this. Two appearances from Worthington in something like this a year? We’d all be richer men for it.
The unfortunate answer to that is a resounding no. There is some risible dialogue as soon as tensions begin to rise, and Hudson fares the worst; some post-production dubbing has landed her with some distinctly PG-13 swearing (this reviewer wouldn’t wish “motherfricking” on their worst enemy) and her role as a protective mother is as rote as it comes. Jovovich is no stranger to ropey scripts and usually handles the fierce bad-ass role with confidence, yet she positively flounders here with a character that wants to be morally grey but comes across as bafflingly unsure from line to line. Wallis begrudgingly takes the expository narration duties, once again not finding a role up to the snuff of her breakout hit Beasts of the Southern Wild, and Common is barely around long enough to register he’s even been in the film. Bizarrely, it’s Sam Worthington who makes the best of his screentime as a hulking weirdo with a shaggy mop and dirtied 76ers basketball shirt, playing the wild card with impish sarcasm and real menace when called for. It’s the type of role that makes you wish he had a bigger career outside of James Cameron’s obscenely expensive Avatar movies, as he’s perfectly capable of significantly livening up DTV fare like this. Two appearances from Worthington in something like this a year? We’d all be richer men for it.
What’s left is the social commentary: does it have bite? Well, once again, Bristol wears his influences on his sleeve. He makes the context clear very early on with a politically-charged mural of a young Black woman wearing a facemask, emblazoned with the slogan “WE CAN’T BREATHE”. Suddenly, the title takes on a timelier meaning, directly linking the high-concept sci-fi idea to the murder of George Floyd, one of the most emblematic tragedies of modern times. Bristol keeps adding touches like this here and there; Malcolm X’s autobiography is passed from character to character with biblical reverence, and a climactic image of mother and daughter in embrace is shot on a double dolly, just like Spike Lee’s trademark stylistic flourishes. None of these elements cohere, however, and the essential political fabric of the film feels loosely tacked on, leaving any thought-provoking takes falling as flat as the film’s derivative plot does at every turn. Bristol also reserves his filmmaking brio to tiny moments like the double dolly, otherwise shooting with bland, locked-off coverage when the material is crying for some handheld urgency. And when that’s the case in a film where a lack of atmosphere is the biggest problem for all of the characters, it’s hopelessly ironic that it’s the biggest problem for its director too.
Save for some resourceful use of its budget on its effect and its cast, Breathe is an uneven affair that takes light stabs at genre thrills and moral quandaries. In the right hands, it could be a tense and claustrophobic meat grinder with devilish nastiness and hard truths to take, yet punches are pulled at every opportunity and the bog-standard whiff of undercooked sci-fi begins to fill the audience’s airways. Bristol may have a future in marrying modern ideas with forward-thinking concepts, but he needs to slow down and (yes, you got it) breathe to find the most expressive way of doing that.
Breathe is out now on VOD via Signature Entertainment
Simon’s Archive – Breathe (2024)
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