One of the great things about cinema is its ability to transport you to places you’ve never seen and into situations you’ve never experienced. In a darkened room at the local multiplex, a viewer can be taken to those hard-to-reach parts of the globe that they’d otherwise never visit, placed in a scenario they never dreamed of finding themselves in.
One advantage of this quality of cinema is that audiences can escape their lives momentarily, go to those extreme places, and live those hardcore experiences without having to deal with any of the potential danger that comes with it; basically, there’s the excitement and the wonder, minus any of the pants-shitting terror. This, surely, is the appeal of the survival movie, and the reason why it seems to lately be somewhat in vogue.
Later this year, Leonardo DiCaprio will tackle a bear and attempt to cross hundreds of miles of frozen North American tundra in The Revenant, while those looking for their survival cinema fix right now will find Baltasar Kormakur’s grueling Everest playing nationwide. And what Kormakur’s draining film has in common with so many survival movies is this: it’ll leave you with a newfound love of indoor living.
On that note, here are eight recent examples of survival movie that will have you rethinking any upcoming outdoors adventures.