Available on DVD: February 2011

Director: David A. Cross
Writer: David A. Cross (screenplay)
Starring: Tracey Teague, Mat Wright, Vince Eustace, Jessica Keeler, Ellie Torrez

Synopsis: The Ancient Romans believed that the soul escaped one’s body with the last breath. It was believed that last breath held the power to cure disease and prolong life. In 1930′s, Dr. Robert Kaminsky devoted his life to finding out how to harness the power in the last breath. Susan Jordan owns a local novelty shop. One item in her shop, an antique box once owned by Doctor Kaminsky, draws the interest of two men: Raif Collins who hopes its contents can save his dying sister, and Alex Poe whose motives are more mysterious. Susan quickly finds herself in a perilous struggle to protect the box and the secrets that it holds.

First off, I would like to thank MTI Home Video for getting this screener over to me. If it was not for them, I may have never heard about this one.

Independent Horror is really hit or miss, with a lot more misses than hits. When you get an Independent Horror movie that has quality aspects to it, you tend to enjoy it that much more. For the most part, I would put Respire as a film that I quite enjoyed. For an independent film, it has very nice production quality to it. Yes, you can still tell that it is a low budget movie, but you can also tell that there is something more to the production team of this movie.

I am new to David A. Cross’ work. This was his first film that I had a chance to view and I am glad that I got the chance to see it. For the first 45 minutes of the movie, you are introduced to a few characters. The character development is done very well and you generally feel for the characters one way or another. There are no wasted scenes, nor wasted dialogue. The story is quite interesting and the development of the story is done well.

With all of the praise that I will give the beginning of the film, I was not sold on the last half of the movie. It was not horrible, but sort of took away from all of the hard work done in the beginning of the movie. Unnecessary scenes start to come into the movie and just some flat out weird happenings occur. Like I said, it was not a horrible way to go, but I would have rather kept going in the same manner as the beginning of the film.

With all of that being said, I think that most people that view this movie, assuming that they are well-versed in Independent Horror, will see the pluses to the movie and will appreciate it.