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Rarely do we tout ways to spend time inside on the couch. But we’re a versatile bunch, and everyone needs rest and relaxation every now and then. If you’re going to have a movie night, of course we’re going to recommend films with an outdoor component—particularly ones that involve a bit of a suckfest. In this sense, survival movies are always the right choice.
Good survival videos, like the most productive survival books, are hard to beat. But it’s also very easy to overlook survival videos. With that in mind, we had to create a few that missed the mark. These movies and the stories they are a clever lesson in what not to do and how nature doesn’t work.
Good survival movies require a few key elements. Without ticking those boxes, a survival movie wouldn’t possibly be in this room of harsh criticism.
After mulling over the countless options, our editors picked their favorite survival movies of all time based on how realistic, engaging, and stomach-churning they are. Disclaimer: spoilers ahead.
In 1972, a flight carrying forty-five people, plus a Uruguayan rugby team, crashed in the remote Andes mountains, surrounded by snow, rocks and sky. After two months of fighting the elements, an avalanche and hunger, only 18 d passengers, largely dining with the deceased members of their group. Eventually, two of the survivors embarked on an adventure to seek help, an adventure that would take them 38 miles over a 15,000-foot peak. Alive is based on this true story. It is a film that makes you think about what you would do to it and is a wonderful example of the ultimate vital asset: the will to live. —Scott Einsmann
Based on Yossi Ghinsberg’s harrowing (and true) survival story, Jungle stars Daniel Radcliffe as an adventurous backpacker, eager to see the unseen and explore the unexplored. A questionable advisor offers to take him deep into the Bolivian jungle, where the organization breaks up and Ghinsberg will have to find his own way out of the jungle. Natural horrors abound, and in the end, our hero is forced to open his forehead. I discovered the film to be dark, realistic and terrifying. The film immerses you in all the new hells that Ghinsberg faces and provokes an unsettling mind about human nature, adventure tourism, and the extremes you can go to escape everyday life in search of an original and ordinary life. —Ashley Thess
The story of Hugh Glass’s 200-mile odyssey is one of the greatest frontier survival stories of all time. Little do they know that Leonardo DiCaprio’s description of the story is largely romanticized. The film’s landscapes are stunning, the action is thrilling, and the bear mauling scene is brutal and iconic. At the very least, DiCaprio does a smart job of describing how terrible this utter delight must have been. If you want a more realistic account of Hugh Glass’s adventure, read Lord Grizzly. . —Alex Robinson
The Way Back is one of my favorite survival movies. It is based on the true story of a few Soviet prisoners who escaped from a Siberian gulag and is adapted from the e-book The Long March, and follows the characters as they trek south through the Gobi Desert. , Communist China, in order to reach India. I know how much it hurts to ride the mountains of Alaska for two weeks straight away with all the comforts of the trendy backpacker. It’s an unfathomable story of perseverance and survival. —Tyler Freel
I’ve seen several documentaries and docudramas about mountaineering (stop by watching The Alpinist now if you haven’t seen it already), but the one that lives rent-free in my head is Touching the Void. It reconstructs the true story of two climbers, Joe Simpson and Simon Yates, who attempted a first ascent of the west face of Siula Grande in Peru. They get to the top, but then things go downhill (literally and figuratively): bones break, storms ensue. On which curves? As it turns out to be the crux of the story, Yates is forced to cut the rope to secure (so neither dies) and Simpson crashes through the glacier into a deep crevasse.
Yates, believing his partner dead, returns to their basecamp. But Simpson isn’t dead, simply too deep in the crevasse to call up to the surface for help. I won’t spoil what happens next but it’s a survival maneuver that still has me in awe 20 years later. —Laura Lancaster
Based on a true story and the number one New York Times bestseller of the same title, Unbroken follows Olympic track and field and boxing star Louis Zamperini on his way from glory at the 1936 Berlin Games to the lowest levels a human being can stand. After enlisting in the Army Air Corps at the start of World War II, Zaperini’s plane crashed over the vast South Pacific, forcing him and his two comrades, Phil and Mac, to stay for weeks in a pair of bare life rafts floating above. -Infested waters in enemy territory. They fish with hooks baited with seagull meat, catch rainwater, and fight small sharks out of the water with their bare hands. After 47 days adrift, during which Mac dies, Zamperini and Phil are not spared. Instead, their salvation lies in capture, imprisonment, and torture through the Japanese military.
What makes Zamperini’s story one of the survival stories of all time?Just as the harrowing component of wilderness survival comes to an end, the real hell begins. —Katie Hill
Based on a true story, Into the Wild is one of the worst survival movies, especially since the hero dies. From a survival standpoint, Chris McCandless wasn’t terribly prepared to live independently in the Alaskan landscape, and he probably would have succumbed faster if he hadn’t. I couldn’t find the bus. Also, it wasn’t in a very remote area. My circle of relatives used the bus as a hunting camp until 1972 and drove their van there. Unfortunately for McCandless, he made the decision to turn around too late. , and unfortunately for the bus, it remained forever a tourist trap and eventually disappeared from the landscape. –Tyler Freel
This Predator prequel is set in 1719 and is worth a watch if you can suspend your disbelief. A cool sci-fi movie? Certainly. Interesting characters? Of course. An exact survival movie? Absolutely not.
The protagonist, Naru, is a Comanche teen desperate to prove herself a hunter and warrior among male peers. The script, however, has her perform all kinds of super-human stunts. Naru spooks a buck she’s trying to kill with a tomahawk and proceeds to run alongside it at top speed through the timber. While chasing the deer, Naru’s dog somehow trips a double long spring foothold trap with the tip of his tail. The running buck sounds like a galloping horse, complete with a whinny and bull elk chirps. Any outdoorsman can spot the problems. Later, Naru attempts to kill a mountain lion by using herself as live bait, a creative interpretation of big-cat hunting tactics. Worst of all, she manages to outrun and outswim a charging grizzly bear—which can cover 20 yards in a single second—while calf-deep in a river.
The film is set in the northern Great Plains, but shows vast landscapes of the Canadian Rockies. (Since I don’t know what kind of generation the Predator was running with, I’ll see how its thermal imaging was thwarted by metabolizing a flower that “cools the blood,” making a warm human body invisible to heat signals within a single second. ) I can put aside genuineness to entertain most sci-fi worlds, but this movie is set on planet Earth, with genuine wildlife and people. In fact, the entire plot is based on human ingenuity. True wilderness survival is in the details, and Prey is dead wrong. —Natalie Krebs
Nothing compares to a very clever survival movie. They can take you from the ups and downs and back again, all in a matter of hours. The next time you’re looking through the same old horror videos or documentaries about genuine crimes, go for a walk. in the wild look and instead one of our favorite survival videos. Rationing your popcorn accordingly.
Katie Hill works at Outdoor Life, where she covers news about the outdoors, hunting, and conservation in the West. She was born and raised on the East Coast but moved to Missoula, Montana, in 2019 to earn her master’s degree in environmental journalism. He still lives in Missoula.
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