Keep Breathing

Would being the sole survivor of a plane crash in the Canadian wilderness be deeply soporific? It seems so. Not even the bears add tension in this basic ...

It is an interesting tactic in a robinsonade, to swerve away from all the times the protagonist might be working out how to stay alive. She also got drunk and nearly died in an accidental fire after her father died, although whether this is meant to suggest she is an alcoholic is unclear. There is no question that Liv will escape the downed plane (she hitched a ride with two guys on a light aircraft after her commercial flight was cancelled). There is no question that the surviving pilot will die just after uttering the news that no one knew their flight plan and so no one is coming to rescue them. Any tension there is in Liv’s remarkably non-urgent fight for survival – it takes her until day three to start looking for food, despite the bear eating her power bars early doors – is further dissipated by flashbacks. And there is no question that this will be confirmed when she rescues their kitbags from the submerged plane and finds them full of money and tubs of opiates. Sure, you would rather be there with a little more food and firestarters than the two power bars and soggy lighter that is Liv’s lot by the time she has swum ashore.

A review of the new Netflix survival series starring Melissa Barrera.

Melissa Barrera is Mexican-born and arguably broke into US stardom via Latinx productions like “ Vida” and “ In the Heights.” Her Liv is also Latina, although we don’t see much more than the fact of her identity. Her reason to keep fighting to survive is because of a fetus inside her. And Liv does reach some revelations: that she was not to blame for her mother’s actions, but she is responsible for her own; that love is valuable even when it can hurt; that her father was imperfect; that so is she. “Keep Breathing” also folds in a psychological thriller with flashbacks to Liv’s past, revealing a long history of emotional wounds, both given and received. She flashes back to her time as a girl scout, remembering how to fashion a compass. Plus, the show does a great job of dramatizing the particular horror of being lost in the woods, the madness of walking in circles, the fear of never finding a way out.

Renewed Or Cancelled? Keep Breathing is Netflix's simple survivalist thriller, combining a litany of flashbacks with a young woman attempting to survive the ...

Would you like to see Keep Breathing return for a second season? Alone and with scarce resources, Liv is forced to battle the elements and the odds to survive. At the time of writing, Keep Breathing has not been renewed for a second season.

Keep Breathing streams on Netflix on July 28, 2022. The survival drama is a paint-by-numbers formula. Take a terrified individual or group, drop them into ...

But as far as the story itself goes, there’s just no reason to watch this middling take on the survival genre when there are so many other series that have done it better. There's also no reason for a device the series goes on to use: the deceased Sam acting as a negative voice that continues to tell Liv she's going to die. The best there is to say? Otherwise, it seems the rest of Liv’s time willing herself to survive is dominated by men as well. Because the last thing a woman should be taking care of is herself, apparently, and writing like this only serves to drive that harmful narrative home. There’s nothing to distract her from her absent mother and doting father’s death…or the skeletons in her closet.

Melissa Barrera stars in a limited series as a New York attorney who has to survive in the Canadian wilderness after a plane crash.

One of the things we like about the six-episode limited series is that the episodes are all around 30 minutes, so you’re not seeing Liv wandering around the wilderness for hours on end. Barerra is taking on a monumental task here, having to essentially act the majority of the scenes by herself, with only the elements and inanimate objects to play against. She displays the same skills in this series; while Liv is decidedly tougher and more closed off than her Vida character Lyn, both characters are survivors in their own way, determined to live the way they feel they should. In her latest project, Barrera will basically be on screen most of the time, and much of the time she’ll be by herself. The pilot dies in his seat, but Liv somehow manages to get out and drag Sam, who doesn’t swim, to shore. Melissa Barrera’s profile has been on the rise for the past few years, ever since she was cast as one of the leads on the Starz series Vida. Since that show debuted in 2018, she has been in the Scream franchise and the film version of In The Heights. In all of those projects, it was hard to take our eyes off her when she was on screen.

I would not get your hopes up for this story to continue. Keep Breathing is billed as a limited series, meaning that the six episodes of the survival drama now ...

But is Keep Breathing season 2 a real possibility at Netflix? We could see how she works through her residual trauma from her own mother leaving her and perhaps even meet her mom in person in the present. Regarding this new show starring Melissa Barrera, the odds don’t seem in its favor to keep going.

Keep Breathing ending explained... did the ending to Netflix survival drama Keep Breathing leave you stumped? Here's our recap of the ending of Keep ...

Initially, she grips onto a log for safety, but as she floats down the flow speeds up and she loses her grip and begins floating downriver on her own whilst memories of her past (and visions of her future) flash by her eyes. Although she'd just managed to find a way out of the cave she'd fallen into (where she got the chance to confront the hallucination of her own mother) the good news is short-lived. Having made peace with her life, she decides to head into the water. Just as she climbs out of the cave, Liv takes a horrific fall right back down to ground level and breaks her leg in the process. However, the series does not actually wrap up with Liv back in civilization, and it cuts to black before we see her escape the woods. Across six episodes, Netflix's Keep Breathing sees Liv (Melissa Barrera) desperately fighting for her survival in the Canadian wilderness after being the lone survivor of a plane crash.

Within 3 minutes of Keep Breathing beginning, 2 flashbacks take place. This essentially sets the precedence for the rest of the season, which lethargically ...

With the emphasis hanging so heavily on the past trauma, the survival elements in the wild take a backseat. The problem is, the show has almost a 65/35 split, with flashbacks dominating much of the run-time. Liv herself is a bit of a mixed bag. Unfortunately, their plane crashes in the middle of the Canadian wilderness and as a result, she’s stranded. Essentially this show plays out like a proverbial tug of war; the flashbacks constantly wrestle against the survival elements in the wilderness. When her plane is cancelled, she hitches a ride with a couple of strangers.