Writing and filming a survival drama for the big screen is no cakewalk; there are several unfilmable elements in any film that is so dependent on physical struggles and there’s a lot of work on body language that has to be perfected. The sense of danger and risk often needs to be translated via other functional ways and the special effects have to be practical and organic. Then there are other components like difficult terrains, navigating natural aspects, and acing the right kind of dynamic between actors, even if they are in the middle of a tumultuous ocean.

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Despite that, Hollywood has produced some very credible survival dramas. While films like 127 Hours and The Revenant became runaway hits, others like The Shallows or Open Water exceeded everyone’s expectations in terms of approach.

Open Water (71%)

Open Water True Story: The Real Shark Encounter That Inspired The Movie Ryan Blanchard

No one expected this 2003 release to do so well, but Open Water gets the memo right on survival horror. The film is loosely based on the true story of an American couple, Tom and Eileen Logan, who are stranded in shark-infested waters on the Great Barrier Reef after their scuba diving group abandons them.

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The movie was well-received by audiences, and it balances environmental horror and elements of a thriller to make the storyline edgier. Although the ending was quite depressing, Open Water is a crisp, engaging watch.

The Way Back (74%)

The Way Back

This Peter Weir film unravels during World War II and much like Rescue Dawn, it has an action-packed prison-break subplot at the heart of it. It follows the story of a captured Polish soldier named Slawomir who was sent to a Gulag labor camp in Russia. He is able to convince a number of fellow prisoners to agree to his plans to escape and they eventually begin their journey towards British India via the Gobi desert.

The design of the movie is rather audacious, like a more elaborate chase through the toughest terrains and unpredictable natural calamities. Though Rotten Tomatoes ranks the film quite higher on its list, the audiences and critics of the film agreed that though the narration is ambitious, it needed to be a lot more engaging.

Into The Wild (83%)

Emile Hirsch Kristen Stewart Into the Wild

This 2007 biographical drama by Sean Penn isn’t your typical survival movie but as it progresses, the tonality of the film gets grittier and more poignant. It tells the story of Christopher McCandless, the famous hitchhiker who traveled from North America to the Alaskan jungles in the nineties.

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Into the Wild is not a traditional find-yourself film because there’s a lot of nuance to it, but the project had a lot of personal significance for Penn and the screenplay represented that. Although there are a lot of perspectives out there on whether McCandless's story is worth a glorified re-telling, it certainly makes for some very good cinema. 

Quest for Fire (86%)

Cavemen holding sticks in Quest for Fire

The prehistoric science adventure drama had no dialogue as it was set 80,000 years in the past and the characters communicated with grunts and hand signals. Critics were amused at the intense ‘gaminess’ of the film that was intriguing because of how realistic the design of the film was.

The script was simplistic, it was based on the novel of the same name by J-H Rosny and followed man’s quest to master fire and though nothing too big or substantial happens, it simply chronicled the grittiness of day-to-survival for the prehistoric man. The careful detailing of the cultural differences between each paleolithic tribe was also widely applauded by critics.

Rabbit-Proof Fence (87%)

Rabbit-Proof Fence

Based on a novel by Australian author Doris Pilkington, this takes a gripping look at the brutal governmental child removal policy that existed in Australia between 1905 and 1967, whose victims are now referred to as the ‘Stolen Generations.’

The film commences in 1930s Australia where the Chief Protector of Aborigines orders three mixed-breed girls to a camp where they can learn the means to become ‘servants.’ The girls escape the camp and start a treacherous walk home to the indigenous district of Jigalong and have to evade the relentless efforts of the Protector and his men to track them down.

Buried (87%)

Ryan Reynolds in Buried

This survival horror has been styled like a psychological thriller and features Ryan Reynolds in one of his career-defining performances. He plays a contract truck driver in Iraq who wakes up in a coffin without the memory of how he got there, although he gradually starts recollecting what may have happened.

He is equipped with a phone and a lighter and gets a call from his kidnapper who demands a ransom of $5 million. The film packs in a surprising amount of drama even with the limited opportunities, with the help of interesting camera movements and a fantastic script. 

Cast Away (88%)

Chuck looks at the ball sat on the sand

Robert Zemeckis’ Cast Away was a flawed film and was a cinematic innovation in many terms. It was one of the first films to fully commit to the idea of a survival ‘drama’ so seriously, which made the screenplay a lot more intense and would go on to become a very bankable genre in modern Hollywood.

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The movie surprisingly had a happy ending, which critics found agreeable and Zemeckis revealed that he made the film to chronicle what four years of hopelessness could do to a man. Tom Hanks plays a time-obsessed delivery man who is stranded on a lonely island with no means to get back to civilization and earned an Oscar nod for his performance.

Rescue Dawn (90%)

Christian Bale and Steve Zahn looking at something off-screen in Rescue Dawn

Werner Herzog had already made a documentary titled Little Dieter Needs to Fly on the same subject in the nineties; but this war drama by the director is seriously gritty, intense and a taut survival watch.

The story follows German-American pilot Dieter Dengler (played by Christian Bale), who is captured and made a prisoner of war where he is tortured. Dengler eventually devises a plan to escape which goes awry but manages to get him out of prison. Afterward, he finds himself in a dense Thai jungle and is eventually rescued by an American helicopter. 

127 Hours (93%)

Man trapped between boulders in 127 Hours

Clearly one of the most gut-wrenching survival dramas ever made, this James Franco piece has the actor playing Aron Ralston, who gets his right arm trapped under a boulder that descended upon a rock wall. Ralston had to slowly and painfully amputate his trapped arm after he gets a vision of his future child.

127 Hours scored six Academy Award nominations including Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Adapted Screenplay, and Franco received a lot of praise for his performances, particularly the camcorder scenes which had just the right element of drama. The film famously led to audiences falling ill and vomiting during its run-time and some viewers even had panic attacks.

Touching The Void (94%)

A climber climbing up a mountain in Touching the Void

This 2003 docu-drama is considered to be one of the best British documentaries ever made and is definitely one of the most intense survival dramas. Mountaineering films are exceptionally hard to design considering there’s very little space to experiment with visual elements, however, this one has a rather controversial premise to fall back on. It follows Joe Simpson and Simon Yates's attempt to ascend the previously unclimbed West Face of Peru’s Siula Grande.

On their way down from the summit, Simpson slips off the side of the mountain and shatters his right leg. After many attempts to lower Simpson to the ground, Yates failed and realized his efforts may be in vain. So he cut the rope and continued down on his descent; Simpson survived the fall but Yates was criticized harshly by the mountaineering circuits for cutting the rope and leaving Simpson to die. When Simpson was invited to Siula Grande for the making of the film, he found it very difficult and experienced some PTSD, though he was happy with the film’s depictions.

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