We all love a good survival movie. Watching someone or a group of people pit their wits against surviving a disaster or unexpected scenario can be scary, exciting – even life-validating. Here we share our pick of the best survival and disaster movies …
1. 127 hours
This must qualify as one of the ultimate survival movies because shows just how far a human being can go to preserve life – desperate situations call for desperate measures.
In this case, it’s the story of outdoorsman Aron Ralston’s real-life struggle to free himself from the huge boulder that had him trapped by his arm in Utah’s mountains.
2. Castaway
There’s an altogether more heart-warming ending to this Tom Hanks classic that reworks the age-old story of being washed up on a desert island.
It, too, illustrates not only the physical but also the mental challenges involved in many survival situations.
3. The Impossible
Based on a true story, this tracks the emotionally charged and harrowing trials of a Spanish family in survival mode after the massive tsunami hit their holiday in Thailand during Christmas of 2004.
The Impossible shines a light on the particular challenges faced not just by one adult or even a couple but a whole family of Mum, Dad, and three children.
4. Alive
In 1972 Flight 571 of the Uruguayan Air Force crashed high in the Andes mountains with the national rugby team aboard.
This is the true story of those who survived – and those who failed to make it – based on American’s Piers Paul Reid’s book of the same title.
5. The Martian
There’s surviving alone in the wilds – and then there’s surviving alone on a completely different planet.
In this sci-fi drama, Matt Damon is stranded on the Red Planet awaiting the arrival of his rescue party – but will they ever turn up?
6. The Way Back, 2010
The date’s important because there are other films with similar titles.
Many tales of survival feature arduous journeys. In this example, it is the account of an especially demanding 4,000-mile trek across the Himalayas by a former Polish prisoner of war after he escapes from a camp in Siberia.
The film is loosely based on Sławomir Rawicz’s memoir – The Long Walk (1956) – depicting his alleged escape from a Siberian Gulag and 4,000-mile walk to freedom in India.
7. I am Legend
Will Smith is the hero in this post-apocalyptic tale of New York City.
Just about the rest of humanity has already been stricken and killed off by a plague and those that remain are blood-thirsty monsters. Our hero, of course, wins through it all.
8. Sully: Miracle on the Hudson
Survival is sometimes made possible only through the heroic, almost super-human efforts, of a single individual.
In this film, that individual is the real-life airline pilot, Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, who crash landed a damaged but loaded Airbus 320 on the Hudson River during its flight from New York City’s LaGuardia Airport to Charlotte, North Carolina – saving the lives of all passengers and crew.
9. Jungle
Another real-life biographical survival film, this one tells the story of Israeli explorer Yossi Ginsberg’s journey into the remote Amazonian rainforest.
It illustrates the perils of relying on the better natures of other team members, the risk of some of those individuals being sparing with the truth, and the ultimate possibility of having to survive entirely alone.
10. Alone in the wilderness
And although the background climate has radically changed that is the theme of the last in our pick of the top ten survival movies.
The wilderness on this occasion are the mountains of Alaska and the film considers the physical challenges of building shelter (a log cabin) in an unforgiving climate and the mental battles against a solitude in which weeks or even months can go by without a single human contact. Based on a true story.
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