Keep Breathing Review: Melissa Barrera Gets Lost in the Woods and Past Trauma

Keep Breathing is a survival drama series released on Netflix on 28 July 2022. The series is created by Martin Gero and Brendan Gall and has 6 episodes in total with a runtime of about 31-40 minutes respectively. It is co-directed by two directors, episodes 1 to 3 are directed by Maggie Kiley while Rebecca Rodriguez has directed episodes 4 to 6.

The cast of the series includes Melissa Barrera as Liv, Jeff Wilbusch as Danny, Austin Stowell, Florencia Lozano as Liv’s mother, Juan Pablo Espinosa as Liv’s father, Mike Dopud, Joselyn Picard and Getenesh Berhe.

Netflix’s synopsis of the series reads:

When a small plane crashes in the middle of the Canadian wilderness, a lone survivor must battle the elements — and her personal demons — to stay alive.

-Keep Breathing Review Does Not Contain Any Spoilers-

A Plane Crash & One Survivor

The series starts off with a woman sitting at the airport waiting for her plane, which is running late. We get to know that her name is Liv and she is a lawyer and has to reach Inuvik in any way. But her flight gets cancelled and luckily she overhears two guys talking about flying through Inuvik. He asks for their help and after some pleading, they agree.

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They get on a private plane and soon get on their way. The pilot’s name is George and the man with him is Sam, a National Geographic photographer going to Caribou. He tries to have small talk with Liv but she seems uncomfortable to tell why she is so eager to reach Inuvik. So she tries to meditate and relax, but when she opens her eyes, the plane is flying very low to the ground and crashes into the water.

However, all the three passengers are alive and hanging upside down in the crashed plane, Liv gets out of her seat and helps Sam to unfasten his seat belt. But as she is about to help George, Sam has long opened the plane door and water floods the plane rapidly. Unable to help him, Liv gets out of the plane to save herself.

Somehow, Liv and Sam are able to swim out of the freezing water but soon she loses Sam as well, due to his internal injuries. That means she is all alone, surrounded by forests, as far as she can see. There’s no phone network or food to survive in the wild and above all, she is pregnant.

She does everything she knows about surviving in the wild but with almost no resources, nothing goes her way. If anything then she is more than ever haunted by the past memories and trauma she faced in her life. The story is shown simultaneously in the present surviving the wild and the flashbacks of the past ( running on the surviving mechanism of her life).

If there’s something to note about Liv’s character is that she is a bit stand-offish or detached. Even when her co-passengers die, we don’t see any emotions coming out of her. And in the following episodes and past flashbacks, you would know why. That’s also one of her regrets, that she pushed away people from coming too close to her and now has no one in her life.

She blames it on her parents, as her mother apparently left her as a child and because of that she doesn’t get too close to people. So that when they leave she doesn’t get hurt. She pushed away her love interest in the same way and often thinks about him and what could have been if they were together.

Final Thoughts: Stream It or Skip It?

Keep Breathing on Netflix is a good try in the survival series genre but seems lacking in comparison. The lead character played by Melissa Barrera definitely hard carries the show but the additional plot about her life history falls flat in front of the present action-adventure in the woods. The flashbacks add another layer to her character but they aren’t hooking/dramatic enough to make an impact.

You often keep waiting for something substantial or a turning point to come and take the story to the next level, but it stays the same. The plot majorly depends on Liv’s grit and determination to live despite being haunted by her past trauma and regrets in life. The show is a quick watch with 6 episodes and not that bad if you don’t have many expectations.

The story is quite predictable and if you keep a close eye then you would see that whatever the character mentions in a scene, turns into reality in the next. Like when asked if Liv is a nervous flyer, she answers, ‘no, a nervous crasher’ & we all know what happened next.

Keep Breathing is streaming on Netflix.

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