We’re also favoring more modern films, if only for easier access to streaming, and also because we know we’re going to piss off some film purists anyway-so why not make our own rules? Receiving a mission that sends only two soldiers into the unknown, however-this drama can become “survival.” Storming a beach with an army under gunfire, while a threat to one’s life, is not “survival” in the way we are defining it. The motivating tensions is basic, elemental: will they live? We’ve chosen films where this tension comes as a surprise, where the protagonist meets the existential threat unknowingly, and either alone or with a small group of companions. These are movies where the protagonist’s very life-and not just their means or mental stability-is under threat. We tried to pick movies where “survival” is more narrowly defined. (Short films would probably fill up a whole other list.) They come in the form of documentaries, animated features, summer blockbusters, and art house cinema.
Those genres: adventure survival, disaster survival, survival horror, post-apocalyptic survival, and real-life survival. It’s obviously a wide genre, and we likely missed one or two or twenty-seven movies that could be on this list we chose instead what we thought were some of the best of the sub-genres. Every movie about abuse, loss, grief, poverty-those can also be survival movies, though “survival” less existentially defined. The natural disaster, the wake of human conflict, war, the day-to-day struggle for sustenance, the stranded/trapped/marooned traveler or explorer-all these can be “survival.” Technically, every movie about war is also a movie about survival. “Survival” can be as broad or as narrow a genre as one makes it.
Before we rank the “best” survival movies, we should get definitional.
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