10 Heart-Pounding Wilderness Survival Movies (2024)

A common fear that many people have is being stuck in the woods with little or no resources. How do you find help? What do you do for food? How do you survive at night, when there's no light and predators lurking around every corner? Hollywood has explored this terrifying premise for decades, crafting thrillers by exploiting the audience's greatest fears and insecurities. The Showtime TV show Yellowja ckets recently broke through on the small screen, depicting a girl's soccer team that must survive in the woods after their plane crashes in the middle of nowhere. Let's just say it doesn't turn out well.

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While not all wilderness survival movies knock it out of the park, several have emerged over the years as being great films. When robust characters meet intense action, wilderness survival movies can be both a great source of entertainment and a stark reminder that sometimes chilling at home with Netflix on the weekend is more comforting than going backcountry camping. These movies will have your heart racing and will get you thinking about what you would do if you were stuck in the same situation.

10 Alive

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Yellowjackets was not the first TV series or movie to explore extreme themes of survival, savagery, and cannibalism. In 1993, a movie called Alive came out that followed a similar premise. When a rugby team's plane crashes in the mountains, the survivors are left to fend for themselves in the middle of the cold wilderness. They have almost no food and start to debate eating the flesh of their dead counterparts to stay alive.

Alive is a lesser-known movie, but it was based on the true story of the 1974 Uruguayan rugby team that crashed in the Andes and had little chance of survival. The film had some actors in it who turned out to be big stars, like Ethan Hawke and Josh Lucas. Alive is hard to watch at times, but the arguments between the remaining teammates make for some pretty heart-pounding moments.

9 The Grey

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Liam Neeson is the ultimate tough guy. Most people know him from Taken as the overprotective father with "a very particular set of skills". It wouldn't be surprising if Neeson said the same line in The Grey. After a plane crash, John Ottway (Neeson) finds himself stuck in the frozen wilderness with his colleagues. All of them are already tired from a long stint working on an oil rig in the Arctic, but they must dig deep if they want to survive. The cold, hungry, and deadly wolves that threaten them are fast approaching, and they don't have much stamina or many resources left.

The action and allegory in The Grey come from the circling wolves that haunt John. Still reeling from the loss of his wife, he's forced to confront his demons head-on and fight the wolves (literal and metaphorical) if he wants to survive. The Grey is an intense thriller with an ambiguous ending that let the audience decide who lives and who dies. It's also one of the best wild animal movies that will keep you out of the woods.

8 The Road

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In 2023, the world lost acclaimed American author Cormac McCarthy. While No Country For Old Men is unquestionably the best movie or TV adaptation of his books, The Road is another one that's certainly worth watching. Viggo Mortenson plays a father taking care of his young son (played brilliantly by Kodi Smit-McPhee) in a post-apocalyptic world. After an unspecified event kills almost all life on earth, the duo must traverse the barren wasteland, searching the woods, hills, and countryside for anything that might help them survive.

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The film does a great job of evoking McCarthy's signature bare-bones style, which often included a lack of punctuation to make the setting seem more bleak. Both Mortenson and Smit-McPhee deliver knockout performances with minimalist dialogue. It doesn't have many big twists, but The Road is riveting for its slow-burning tension, moody score, and gut-wrenching ending.

7 The Edge

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You can't talk about wilderness survival movies without mentioning The Edge. Anthony Hopkins stars as Charles, a billionaire who brings his model wife to Alaska for a photo shoot. Alec Baldwin plays Bob, one of the photographers and a good friend of Charles. The team decides to visit another friend in a remote part of the forest, but their plane crashes on the way there after hitting a flock of birds. From there, Charles and Bob's friendship is put to the test as they struggle to survive while also fighting off a giant grizzly bear that's hunting them.

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Filmed in the Canadian Rockies in the summer of 1996, The Edge features some of the most beautiful natural scenery in the world. That beauty is juxtaposed against Charles and Bob's deteriorating relationship and sets the stage for what they are both willing to do to make it out alive. The Edge features some great acting and heart-racing action, making it the most notable wilderness survival movie to come out of the 1990s.

RELATED: Best Anthony Hopkins Movies, Ranked

6 Jungle

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Jungle tells the true story of Yossi Ghinsberg (played by Daniel Radcliffe), an Israeli adventurer who travels to Bolivia looking for adventure. When Yossi meets a new acquaintance who knows about a secret tribe living deep in the jungle, he and his friends decide to follow the stranger against their better judgment. The group is separated in the deep jungle and Yossi gets swept away in some river rapids, which destroy his raft in the process.

Radcliffe does an excellent job of playing the desperate Yossi, who must fend for himself after the accident, with no tools, food, or survival skills. The movie creates intensity by jumping back and forth from Yossi's past, insinuating that he's hallucinating. Jungle received mostly positive reviews and is considered one of Daniel Radcliffe's best post-Harry Potter movies.

5 Wrong Turn

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Wrong Turn, released in 2021, is a reboot of the 2003 horror movie of the same name. Jen (Charlotte Vega) and her friends travel to a small town in Virginia to hike the Appalachian Trail, but they notice something is off right away. They're treated with hostility at a local bar, where they also meet a young and mysterious mute girl. Setting off into the woods, the friends decide to go off the main trail despite repeated signs warning them not to.

You can probably guess where this is going. The friends fall into a trap set by a local tribe of savages and are taken to their leader, a brute named Venable (Bill Sage), who sentences the group to death. From there, Jen and her buddies must fight to survive, navigating the vast forest while trying not to get killed. Wrong Turn is a notch above its franchise predecessors, delivering enough gore to satisfy horror fans but not relying on the cannibalism angle too much to turn off the casual viewer. There's even talk of a Wrong Turn sequel in the works

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4 The Revenant

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Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's The Revenant is easily one of the most well-known wilderness survival movies out there. After he's viciously attacked by a bear and left for dead by his group of fur traders, Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) must battle injuries, hunger, and hypothermia to exact revenge. He's determined to hunt down John S. Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy), the man ordered to stay with Glass but instead killed his young son.

From a brutal bear attack scene to a gritty performance from one of today's leading Hollywood actors, The Revenant delivers on every level. It pulls viewers into its violent story and spits them out into a world fueled by rage and a taste for revenge. DiCaprio won his first Academy Award for his performance as Glass. His role in The Revenant is considered one of the best Oscar-winning performances of the 2010s.

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RELATED: Here’s Every Alejandro González Iñárritu Film, Ranked

3 Backcountry

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Backcountry is a small Canadian survivalist movie with a big bite. The movie centers around Alex (Jeff Roop) and Jen (Missy Peregrym), a couple who decide to spend a weekend hiking together in the woods. Alex insists they don't need a map as he knows the area well. After an overnight camp, Alex and Jen go off-trail to where Alex believes there's a lake and a waterfall. When they get there, neither of those things are there and the couple realizes they're lost. To make matters worse, they find giant bear prints and half-eaten animal carcasses.

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Once the black bear comes into play, Backcountry turns into a heart-stopping thriller. Alex and Jen must escape the bear without any tools, resources, or food. The movie was shot on location in Ontario and Manitoba, making the cinematography more realistic and the emotions more raw. Backcountry premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in 2014 and currently holds an outstanding 92% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

2 Into the Wild

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Into the Wild stars Emile Hirsch as adventurer Christopher McCandless, a university graduate who wants to chart his own course in life. Even though his wealthy parents have set him up to live a comfortable life in the city, McCandless yearns for adventure and sets off to live in the wilderness where he doesn't have to worry about money, popularity, or relationships.

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Directed by Sean Penn, Into the Wild is based on a true story. The real-life McCandless became a cult hero when he set off on foot en route to Alaska in 1992, and made headlines by living out of an abandoned bus for months. Unfortunately, McCandless didn't survive his journey, dying alone after eating a poisonous plant he mistook for an edible one. Into the Wild features many heartbreaking moments, like when McCandless kills a moose but its meat spoils, bringing the protagonist to tears.

1 Prey

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Another wilderness survival film shot in Canada is 2022's Prey. The movie is a part of the Predator franchise and acts as a sequel to the first four films. Naru (Amber Midthunder) is a young Comanche woman who is not allowed to hunt. She tries to catch a mountain lion that attacked one of her friends but fails to kill it. When an alien Predator attacks Naru's tribe, however, she's forced to use her fighting skills and weapons training to survive.

As the creature tracks Naru through the forest, she's forced to stay one step ahead and outsmart the alien before it kills more people. Prey is full of tense moments, fast action, and strong CGI, making it a worthy addition to the Predator franchise. Midthunder carries the movie, and in 2022, she won a Saturn Award for her breakthrough performance.

10 Heart-Pounding Wilderness Survival Movies (2024)
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