Reel Review: Survive

Survive wastes no time. The oceans vanish, the Earth flips, and what was once an open sea becomes a scorched desert. A family wakes up stranded on their yacht, now marooned on the cracked seabed with no food, no water, and no clear way out. Émilie Dequenne delivers a raw, grounded performance. She doesn’t play a superhero—just a mother holding it together for her kids while everything around them breaks. The heat is relentless. The silence feels apocalyptic. And the ocean, once endless and alive, is now a wasteland of rusted ships, dead marine life, and cracked salt flats that stretch for miles.

The first half is tense, focused, and stripped to the bone. Every choice matters. There’s no score guiding the emotion—just wind, sun, and survival. The atmosphere does the heavy lifting, and it works. Then things get stranger. A harpoon-wielding drifter crosses their path. Crabs start bursting from the dry ground. Heatstroke and hallucinations blur the line between real and imagined. Some of it works. Some of it doesn’t. But it never feels lazy. This is a film willing to take swings—even if not all of them connect.

Where Survive hits hardest is in the quiet. Not the spectacle but the stillness. The way fear sets in. The way hope fades. The way survival becomes something smaller and more intimate than most disaster films dare to show. Mitten’s Verdict:  Uneven but memorable. Survive is strange, sunburnt, and tougher than it looks. Rated: 5 out of 10.