‘Last Breath’ ending explained: Director unpacks true story

Warning: This story contains spoilers for Last Breath.

The only thing more shocking than Last Breath‘s ending is that it’s all true.

Director Alex Parkinson turned his 2019 documentary into a dramatic thriller (now playing in theaters) starring Finn Cole as real-life saturation diver Chris Lemons, who earns his living repairing and maintaining offshore oil rigs and pipelines on the ocean’s floor.

One of the most dangerous jobs in the world, these underwater repairmen spend weeks living in RV-sized pressurization tanks housed in massive ships that transport them to the waters above their job site. After acclimating to the pressure, they move into a diving bell, a smaller pressurized vessel tethered to the ship, which is then lowered close to the ocean floor. From there, the divers, connected to the bell via an “umbilical” cable, descend the rest of the way down and make their repairs.

At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work.

But in 2012, while Lemons was 330 feet underwater, the support vessel above him suffered a systems failure during a violent storm. The boat drifted from its position, dragging Lemons and his diving bell along with it. As the ship moved, Lemons’ umbilical cable snapped, leaving him stranded alone on the ocean floor without heat or light — and only five minutes of emergency oxygen.

Despite the impossible odds, Lemons survived for more than 30 minutes without oxygen as the crew on the surface worked to fix the onboard computers. Once they got the diving bell back in position, Lemons’ fellow diver, David Yuasa (played by Simu Liu), went back down for what he assumed was a body recovery. However, to his and fellow diver Duncan Allcock’s (Woody Harrelson) shock, Lemons regained consciousness inside the chamber. To this day, doctors can’t explain why Lemons never experienced physical or mental side effects from the oxygen deprivation. Even more baffling: Lemons went back to work just three weeks later!

Wondering how any of this could be true? Dive in below as Parkinson answers our burning questions about Lemons, saturization diving, the accident, and more.

Is Chris Lemons still alive and diving?

Yes, he’s still alive, but he no longer dives. According to the director, the real-life Lemons “loves” the movie about his near-death experience. “He saw the film a couple of days ago,” Parkinson says. “And he no longer dives; he’s now a dive supervisor like Craig [played by Mark Bonnar] in the film, so he works occasionally on the ship the accident happened on.”

How long did he go without oxygen?

No one knows exactly. “It’s very hard to know when he passed out, but from when the umbilical broke to when he was resuscitated, it’s 36 or 37 minutes,” Parkinson says. “He had his emergency gas, which by law was only supposed to be five minutes of extra gas — he had a minimum of five minutes, but some people think he had seven or eight minutes if he worked really hard about not overexerting himself. But there’s no way he had more than 10 minutes. So, to sum up, the actual exact figure of when he passed out, no one actually knows.”

How did he survive for so long?

Again, no one knows! It’s a question puzzling doctors, scientists, and even Lemons himself. “I think he would put it down to the cold of the water and then also the saturation levels of the oxygen he was breathing,” Parkinson says. “Maybe the pressure as well, but no one actually knows, and that’s the incredible thing. I know of theories, but there’s no way of knowing how it happened, and especially that he has no lasting effects from being oxygen deprived.”

Did he really return to diving only three weeks after the accident?

“That’s absolutely 100 percent true,” Parkinson says. “It’s all about getting back on that horse. And the longer you leave it before you get back to doing it, the harder it’ll be to do.”

According to the director, Lemons “wasn’t interested in trying to find a payout” after the accident, either. He just wanted to return to the job to finish what he started. “He was so committed and loved diving so much,” Parkinson says. “It was all constructed so that Dave and Duncan would be with him as well, and they basically just finished what they started before the accident happened. It shows you how much these people love what they do.”

Did he go the hospital after his accident?

In the movie, Lemons goes straight home to his fiancée Morag (Bobby Rainsbury) and skips out on any check-ups. But Parkinson says he chose not to show that part of the story in the movie. “What happened immediately after the accident is that it takes four days for them to come out of saturation,” the director says. “He can’t come straight out, and so basically those four days, he had lots of [health checks] from the other saturation divers, who are medically trained — they have to be because they are absolutely isolated when they’re in those pods.”

Since it takes longer for sat divers to be safely depressurized after finishing the job than it does for astronauts returning from the moon, Lemons had plenty of time being monitored for any negative lasting effects. “They were checking him and testing him the best they could with a kit, and by the time they opened the doors and he could come out, he was pretty much exactly back to normal.”

Then, he went to the hospital for a full check-up.

Did he really not suffer any negative side effects from the lack of oxygen?

As hard as it is to believe, no! “I think the only effect you can say he had from the lack of oxygen was that moment when he was first resuscitated and he appeared to be brain dead, but after that, nothing,” Parkinson says.

That moment in the movie plays out exactly as it did in real life. “The line he said, ‘Are you okay, Dave? What’s happened?’ That actually happened,” Parkinson reveals. “He just did not realize at that point that an accident had happened to him — he thought that David had an accident because he was so upset.”

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What does Lemons remember from the half hour he was stranded?

According to the director, Lemons remembers the moment he was thrown off the underwater structure and landed on the ground. But he didn’t have a flare to light his way as he does in the movie.

“For cinematic reasons, we have to see what he’s doing — obviously, it wouldn’t have been very good to see him in pitch black,” Parkinson says. “But in reality, he fell in pitch black, and it was that incredible thought process and fortitude to pick a direction to walk and find the manifold, but in all the 360 degrees, he picked the right direction to go. If he had picked the wrong direction, he would’ve walked out to the wilderness and would never have been found, probably.”

Once he got back to the manifold, he only remembers what happened up until he lost consciousness. “He remembers thinking, and this is where the name of the film comes from, ‘Yup, this is it. This is my last breath.’ And from then on, he doesn’t remember anything,” Parkinson says.

Was any real footage from the accident used in the movie?

Yes — and not just in the credits montage. Parkinson reveals that the footage of Lemons convulsing on top of the manifold — captured by the remote-operated underwater vehicle (ROV) — is actually real.

“We shot that with Finn, but the reality of it was that the real footage was so powerful and so compelling, and you couldn’t tell [that it wasn’t the actor],” Parkinson says. “It just felt right to use that. The whole documentary was sold on that footage — so chilling to look at. I worked very hard to blend that in so you’re not aware of that at all, but you do actually end up watching the real footage without being aware of it.”

Did he really try to avoid telling his fiancé about his involvement in the accident?

In the movie, when Lemons returns home to his fiancé, he tells her that there was an incident at work, but he makes it seem like it happened to another diver.

“That’s 100 percent true,” Parkinson confirms. And just like in the movie, she immediately knew he was fibbing.

How much money do saturation divers make for risking their lives?

“It is a high-paying job,” Parkinson says. “They’re compensated very well because you’ve got to be highly trained to do this in the first place. But also, you are offshore for months at a time in a tin can, so I think you are paid hundreds of thousands a year, easily.”

According to ZipRecruiter, saturation divers in the United States earn an average annual salary of about $123,299, or roughly $59 per hour. 

Speaking of those tin cans, what do the pressurization tanks smell like after housing four men for weeks at a time?

Surprisingly, not too bad. “They’re very meticulous about all that kind of stuff,” Parkinson says. “You don’t want to have somebody smelling in that environment. And also, because it’s quite damp in there as well, quite humid, you’ve got to keep yourself clean; otherwise, you’ll start getting infections.”

Was this Lemons’ first brush with death?

Again, surprisingly no! “There is one thing I didn’t include, which is that Chris Lemons has actually had a few near-death experiences before this happened,” Parkinson reveals. “Three or four years before the accident happened, he got buried in an avalanche and very nearly died then as well. And another occasion is when he got swept out to sea, and he had to be rescued and nearly died then. It’s quite funny, it always revolves around water or breathing.”

How did this accident change his life?

It really didn’t, according to the director. “It’s quite a weird situation for him because, as he puts it, he’s the damsel in distress — he’s unconscious for most of the actual accident,” Parkinson says. “I was very curious about how it changed his life afterward, and the interesting thing is that it didn’t change his life. But to the people who were involved with it, it did change them massively — the people on the bridge who are watching the ROV footage and literally watching what they think is their colleague dying in front of them.”

For Lemons, ignorance is bliss. “I think he would agree with that,” Parkinson says with a laugh.