5 Overlooked Survival Movies to Make You Appreciate the Comfort of Your Chair
Everyone knows DiCaprio’s The Revenant and Damon’s The Martian, but there are many more great survival movies that will put you (and their characters) on edge.
5. Arctic (2018)
We’ve all heard the tales about the Arctic and the tough explorers who go out there for weeks, enduring the unbelievably harsh weather and the elements and living on the very limited resources they can carry with them. But what if there were no resources, no group, and no communication? Would this mean, there’s no hope?
Mads Mikkelsen ’s character certainly doesn’t think so, but he faces another tough question: should he remain in the safety of his makeshift camp or embark on a deadly journey to find civilization? The camp seems like the safer bet, but his finding of another dying survivor means there’s no choice but to leave for the eternal winter.
4. Everest (2015)
One more for the snowy hell, Everest reveals the true struggle of every climber’s biggest dream: reaching the top of the world’s highest mountain. Everest Mountain contains many horrors on the path to its peak, and it’s no one’s secret that modern climbers even use their predecessors’ frozen bodies as waypoints.
As a seasoned climber leads a group on this glorious journey, they find themselves trapped in a massive snowstorm that puts everything to question: their endurance, their sanity, and their will to live. The elements are ruthless and unforgiving; will this group add to the pile of bodies atop Mount Everest?
3. Alive (1993)
As spectacular and enchanting as they are, mountains are dangerous and unforgiving. From Everest, we travel to the Andes to join the young athletes from a rugby team whose plane crashed in the brutal snow swept wilderness. Unequipped for the situation they’re thrown into, the surviving athletes are faced with a tough choice.
With no tents, they must use the plane wreckage as shelter. With no water, they must resort to eating snow. With no food… You can only stay moral for so long as you’re dying from cold and hunger, and with each passing hour, the dead bodies of your friends look more and more appetizing. To survive, they must become animals.
2. 127 Hours (2010)
Believe it or not, we’re still in the mountains. Well, not us, of course — we’re only in for the journey to truly learn to appreciate the comfort of our homes. But James Franco ’s character, a sole climber, loves his business and deems himself a master. That is, until one of his expeditions to the Utah mountains goes horribly wrong.
The climber finds himself in quite a predicament when a large boulder pins him down, trapping his right forearm underneath. With no help in close proximity and no means of communicating with the outside world, he spends 127 hours in solitary confinement with no food and water, and has to resort to truly desperate measures.
1. The Grey (2011)
Another plane crash, another tale of survival in a desolated frozen wasteland. This time, it’s a group of oil workers who found themselves in the dead center of Alaska with no one but a professional hunter (you might have heard of him; we call him Liam Neeson) and a pack of hungry wolves that traces their every step. Risky stuff.
Seven men with an iron will to survive against the unforgiving Alaskan wilderness, trapped in the never-ending snow and followed by a wolf pack. It’s only a matter of time until they lose control, but the hunter, their guide, is devoted to reaching civilization safely; is one person enough to fight nature itself and stay alive?