The Last Dive

Cody Sheehy: The Last Dive (US 2025). Willy Wow, the giant manta ray, and Terry Kennedy and Dawn Kennedy on San Benedicto Island on Revillagigedo Islands, the Pacific Ocean, Mexico.

United States 2025.

Director: Cody Sheehy

Starring: Joyce Clinton, Dan Fitzgerald, Terry Kennedy

    Language: English

    88 min

    Distributor: Common Pictures, subtitles: partly English

    Love & Anarchy 38th Helsinki International Film Festival (HIFF).

    In person: Christopher Gebhardt

    Video message: Cody Sheehy

    Viewed at Bio Rex Lasipalatsi, Helsinki, Sun 21.9.2025 at 11.00–12.28

Saija Holm (HIFF 2025): "Love for manta rays drives a former Marine to take a stand for a persecuted species. This deep-sea diving documentary is a powerful statement on the urgency of environmental activism."

"Terry is a former Marine as well as an ex-Hells Angel and an ex-model. Despite his love for the sea, Terry isn’t exactly an environmental activist, until an encounter with a huge manta ray changes everything."

"During one carefree diving trip, a 7-meter-long manta ray swims into Terry’s life. Terry names the animal Willy Wow, for swimming with the manta ray – flying underwater! – has an unparalleled wow factor. It’s a moment, in which Terry, haunted by ghosts of his past, is truly free."

"In the film, we see archival material from Terry’s diving trips with Willy and its kind. Some of the material might be shocking, as Terry and his companions film, by hand, a brutal attack by poachers into the manta rays’ home waters."

"Terry’s friendship with Willy gets him to fight for the species. Eventually he even accomplishes an amendment to protect these intelligent, yet feared, creatures, and to end the cruel poaching."

"In the film’s present time we meet 80-year-old Terry, who leaves for one last diving trip, his wish being to meet his marine friend one last time."

"The film, set in the Mexican and North Californian clear water coasts, is a substantial statement on human greed, and the importance of environmental work." Saija Holm (translated by Vilja Hynynen)

"Rakkaus rauskuihin ajaa entisen merijalkaväen sotilaan barrikadeille vainotun lajin puolesta. Meren syvyyksiin sukeltava dokumentti on painava puheenvuoro luonnonsuojelutyön tärkeydestä."

"Terry on entinen merijalkaväen sotilas, ex-Helvetin enkeli ja ex-malli. Huolimatta rakkaudestaan merta kohtaan Terry ei ole varsinainen luontoaktivisti, kunnes kohtaaminen jättimäisen paholaisrauskun kanssa muuttaa kaiken."

"Eräällä huolettomalla sukellusretkellä Terryn elämään ui 7-metrinen rausku. Terry antaa eläimelle nimeksi Willy Wow, sillä rauskun kanssa uiminen – veden alla lentäminen! – on Terrylle vertaansa vailla oleva vau-kokemus ja hetki, jolloin menneisyyden haamujen riivaama mies on todella vapaa."

"Elokuvassa nähdään arkistomateriaalia Terryn sukellusretkiltä Willyn ja tämän lajitovereiden kanssa. Osa materiaalista voi järkyttää, sillä Terry kumppaneineen kuvasi tutisevalla käsivaralla salametsästäjien verisen iskun rauskujen kotivesille."

"Terryn ystävyys Willyn kanssa ajaa miehen barrikadeille lajin puolesta. Lopulta hän saa aikaan jopa lakimuutoksen näiden älykkäiden, mutta pelättyjen, olentojen suojelemiseksi ja julman salametsästyksen lopettamiseksi."

"Elokuvan nykyhetkessä tapaamme kahdeksankymppisen Terryn, joka lähtee vielä yhdelle sukellusretkelle, toiveenaan kohdata merenalainen ystävänsä viimeisen kerran."

"Meksikon ja Pohjois-Kalifornian kirkasvetisille rannikoille sijoittuva elokuva on painava puheenvuoro ihmisen ahneudesta ja luonnonsuojelutyön tärkeydestä." Saija Holm

AA: Cody Sheehy's The Last Dive is a documentary on the giant manta ray called Willie Wow by the couple Terry and Dawn Kennedy, divers on San Benedicto Island in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Mexico.

The Last Dive is a love letter to sea life, a celebration of the mystery of life, a great diving adventure, and a Bildungsroman of Terry Kennedy, the outlaw and Hell's Angel, growing into a man of responsibility, not only of his own life, but the survival of life on our globe, often seen as Tellus while it is in reality more Oceania.

My favourite sequence is the one in which Terry meets Willie Wow for the last time in 2007. The giant ray leads Terry to the sea bottom where he detects a huge abandoned tuna net of 1700 meters. Terry alerts the Mexican coast guard to clear it off. After this, Willie vanishes.

Terry tells about his long treks aboard Willie. They learned to know each other well. Sometimes Terry was only thinking about a destination, and Willie just took him there. Terry is intrigued by the rays' "electric signature" and "electric gatherings". They raise new ideas about what is possible in the universe.

During a half of century of diving, Terry witnesses the development from lonely bravados like himself to mass tourism, and an expansion of the fishing industry to ryöstökalastus / overfishing.

A turning-point is an event in 1994. Three long range fishing boats intrude beyond the legal range with harpoons and hooks, overfishing and gathering the loot even without killing the suffering sealife, just laughing at the animals agonized in their death throes. Willie and his friends video-record the crime, and the media impact is like wildfire. It becomes an international scandal. The President of Mexico intervenes. The event leads to a rise in founding nature reserves, including San Benedicto Island. The catastrophe turns into a success story. Willie survives but vanishes from the battlefield for the time being.

Cody Sheehy has crafted a montage film from a plethora of private and public archival material, covering Terry Kennedy's life story and his exploration of the ocean. Like in Jacques-Yves Cousteau's oeuvre, we see early footage of sealife massacre and the epiphany leading to nature conservation. It comes with the territory that much of the footage is in low definition. The sum of it is magnificent and uplifting.

A film like this touches me personally. In an alternative life I might be a sailor, a diver or even a sea mammal. In my dreams I am in the oceanic world, beyond the visible, every night, not as a visitor but as an inhabitant. Cinema for me is oceanic. About rays, one of my favourite movies is the Éclair documentary La Torpille / Torpedo Fish (FR 1913), about the extraordinary qualities of the electric ray. Its electric vibrations are examined in scientific tests. It is also appealing to remember that in Honoré de Balzac's cast of characters in La Comédie humaine there is La Torpille.