Search results
The survival film is a film genre in which one or more characters make an effort at physical survival. [1] The genre focuses on characters' life-or-death struggles, often set against perilous circumstances.
Jun 1, 2022 · These best survival movies have their characters staying alive through shark attacks, adrift ocean voyages, shipwrecks, plane crashes, and other adventures.
- Marisa Lascala
- Senior Parenting & Relationships Editor
- marisa.lascala@hearst.com
Jun 17, 2022 · If you're looking for a pulse-pounding distraction from reality, check out these 12 survival films from apocalyptic thrillers, to persevering in extreme wilderness—or surviving outer space.
Jan 23, 2012 · Quest for Fire. Set 80,000 years in the past, this unusual film distills the survival movie to its simplest, most human element: the quest for fire. When a tribe of homosapiens lost their...
- “The Impossible”
- “Captain Phillips”
- “Panic Room”
- “127 Hours”
- “Swiss Family Robinson”
- “A Quiet Place”
- “Wild”
- “Gerald’s Game”
- “Titanic”
- “Alive”
Fourteen-year-old Tom Holland makes his feature filmdebut in “The Impossible,” an epic dramatization of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami disaster that claimed nearly 230,000 lives. Directed by J. A. Bayona (“Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom”), the film is based on Spanish physician María Belón’s harrowing experience. She survived the event with her husb...
Directed by Paul Greengrass, “Captain Phillips” is controversial not for its content, but because the film’s real-life inspirations disagree about what happened during the 2009 Maersk Alabama hijacking. Tom Hanks stars as the titular Richard Phillips, the captain of an American cargo ship seized by Somali pirates. Over four days, Phillips and his c...
Jodie Foster appears with a 10-year-old Kristen Stewart in “Panic Room”: David Fincher’s edge-of-your-seat survival thriller from 2002 about a violent home invasion. Set in a brownstone on New York City’s Upper West Side, the film features Forest Whitaker, Jared Leto, and Dwight Yoakam as burglars intent on retrieving a hefty sum they believe is hi...
Sweeping survival epics portend a kind of you-get-what-you-pay-for mentality. Go to space? Yes, you might die. Survive the apocalypse? That sucks that that happened, but, again: Yes, you might die. Directed by Danny Boyle, “127 Hours” tells the more grounded tale of a solo mountain climber that still capitalizes on the dramatic irony of its protago...
By far the cheeriest title on this list, director Ken Annakin’s “Swiss Family Robinson” is the second adaption of author Johann David Wyss’ novel about a Swiss family shipwrecked in the West Indies. (Edward Ludwig delivered his good-but-not-as-good version, released by RKO Radio Pictures, in 1940. It’s worth seeing, if only because Walt Disney purc...
John Krasinski delivers one hell of a directorial debut with “A Quiet Place,” the post-apocalyptic sci-fi survival epic that imagines Earth as a planet infested with creatures hunting humans by sound. Casting himself and his wife Emily Blunt in the lead roles, Krasinski elevates what could be a one-note schtick fit for a C-level creature feature in...
One could argue “Wild” should be disqualified from ranking on a best survival movies list because it features only a handful of life-and-death scenarios. Based on author Cheryl Strayed’s memoir of the same name, the 2014 film chronicles the then-novice hiker’s 1995 solo expedition on the Pacific Coast Trail, confronting its protagonist with a varie...
A truly spectacular Carla Gugino fights for her life in “Gerald’s Game,” horror master Mike Flanagan’s first stab at a Stephen King adaptation and the harrowing story of a stranded woman handcuffed to a bed inside a remote cabin. When Jessie and Gerald Burlingame (an appropriately understated Bruce Greenwood) plan a sexy couple’s getaway — complete...
James Cameron’s “Titanic” is remembered primarily as a swelling romance — starring a stunning Kate Winslet and a dashing Leo DiCaprio — that won big at the box office with a $1.84 billion worldwide gross at the time of its initial release. But the 1997 historical epic is also a brutal dramatization of the mass-casualty disaster with which its synon...
Survivor’s guilt takes center stage in this tragic dramatization of a real plane crash along the Andes Mountains. On October 13, 1972, Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, bound for Chile with a winning rugby team on board, veered into a mountain when an inexperienced pilot mistakenly began the flight’s descent. Ethan Hawke, Josh Hamilton, John Haymes N...
- Alison Foreman
Jan 23, 2023 · Survival movies feel different than any other type of film, and speak to the resourcefulness of the human spirit. Here are the 22 best survival films, ranked.
Life of Pi. 2012 2h 7m PG. 7.9 (676K) Rate. 79 Metascore. A young man who survives a disaster at sea is hurtled into an epic journey of adventure and discovery. While cast away, he forms an unexpected connection with another survivor: a fearsome Bengal tiger. Director Ang Lee Stars Suraj Sharma Irrfan Khan Adil Hussain. 4. Kon-Tiki.
