The Survivalist

This film is a prime example of how well researched material can take the smallest of budgets, minimal dialogue and a complete lack of soundtrack and turn this into a masterpiece. The viewer is given no background story and none of the characters are fleshed out. There is next to no information on anyone in the film apart from the main character, and even with him, there is very little information given. But that is the point. The strength of the film lies not in the story but the idea of what one does to survive when life goes back to basics. The viewer's attention is drawn to the intensity of the situation, the survival skills that are actual knowledge one needs to survive in the wild. The cold and barren undertone of the film should have been the reason for its failure. Instead, it serves to emphasise the stark and bleak situation that all the characters are faced with. The script does not pull any punches and a strong stomach is needed for some scenes. And if you get the gist of the film so far, then you will already know whether there is a happy ending or not...

Stumbled across this title and it looked interesting and promising, so I gave it a watch. I made it to the end without getting angry nor finding anything fundamentally wrong with it, so that's a positive for me. I like the way it was filmed, liked the minimal dialogue, liked the pacing and overall felt it was worthy of 7/10. However I couldn't help think that what I witnessed was essentially this: 1. Man is doing his best on his own. Obviously watched and took detailed notes from Bear Grylls and Les Stroud (Survivorman) and has a one man farm in the woods up and running smoothly and efficiently. 2. Women arrive and it all goes downhill for him from there. The moral of the story - Women. Can't live with them, can't kill them. But in this case he could have and should have.

The survivalist leaves a lot to the imagination, telling the story of our lead a man who lives out in the wilderness paranoid and alone when his world is disrupted by the appearance of two women. Does he risk his perfect though limited little world by allowing them access to his home or should he turn them away? The Survivalist is a dark gritty tale that pulls no punches, I found myself oddly empathising and relating to the lead and yet at the same time was frustrated by that distinct lack of entertainment value I found. This multi award winning effort simply didn't connect with me and though I certainly appreciate what they were going for unfortunately didn't see the appeal. Credit to the cast, credit to the film makers but for me this made for uncomfortable viewing and a really lackluster finale. The Good: All round well made Strong performances Great concept The Bad: Uncomfortable stuff Certainly niche viewing Weak ending Things I Learnt From This Movie: The survivalist lifestyle isn't as glamorous as others may have you believe Don't let women in your life, they'll ruin everything

Extraordinarily well executed, fresh, replete with lots of smart details bring it all to life. The characters are believable; raw and wild, running on their baser instincts, struggling to be civil in a world where gnash-toothed animals survive and civility only gets you dead. They try to be civil! Oh bless their hearts they try. What I loved the most is the transformation you see in the characters; they go from feral, viciously unlikeable creeps to slowly warming up and right before your eyes they bloom into something like humans again, full of love and empathy and hate and greed and loyalty and all the paradoxes of the human condition. The setting is well fleshed out, with enough mystery regarding the details of society's breakdown to suspend any disbelief you might have about the premise. You feel like it's real. The characters further help you sense the desperation and anxiety of the world portrayed here. It's very somatic; you feel the hunger, the distrust, the anger and the violence of revenge. I was left feeling grateful for the world I live in, which is the purpose of theme I suspect. It really could be worse. Watch this movie and feel intense gratitude for your humdrum life. Enjoy!

Looking at the cover, you may well have high expectations for this film..you see review snippets of .. "Masterful!", "Will shake you for days", "Mad Max, in the countryside". Seeing that Post Apocalyptic films are my favourite genre, I thought I might be about to watch something special. It starts off very slow, but that's OK. You figure they are bringing you gently into the Brutal reality of the world in a curious unsuspecting way, but no. It just stays at a slow pace from there. We are introduced to the protagonists enemies on very rare occasion, which helped break the monotony a bit, but its fleeting, and do not expect anything like the visceral eye feast of Mad Max. A disappointment really, and certainly a bad comparison to make it to Mad Max. I had high hopes of something akin to the UK feel of 28 days later, but this was quite a lack lustre of a film. Have to say as well, there is some sort of weird erotic element to the film. The main actor is well endowed, as they say, and so the director seems to like showing this off in a few random scenes. So out of the blue, we see him walking around naked in his dreams or having a random * session.

This won't be everyone's cup of tea. I however have watched plenty of absolute rubbish and this film is well acted, filmed and written. I'm a big Walking Dead fan and this reminded me quite a bit on it, although more a slower stronger tequila without zombies than the beery dead. The atmosphere is palpable and a lot is left to the imagination as to the whys and whats however the interplay in a low number of characters is pretty intense. You do need to be able to enjoy this kind of thing and there's a lot of subtext social commentary in here, not much is in your face explicit generic movie script that spells everything out. Shot beautifully in Ireland, intense stuff with no laughs, but I thought pretty fresh.

Initially I was hoping for a true gem never seen before. Instead, I spent my 104 minutes of life, on Friday night might I add, watching a guy surviving for SEVEN years in a forest looking like where I played hide and seek when I was 6, not being able to harvest more than 2 square feet of land. If you call that surviving, then I am an astronaut! After seven years he was so "evolved" that he actually caught a rabbit with a bear trap! How impressive and skillful. I am willing to accept a bet: place me in a forest with a pocket knife and leave me 7 days and I will catch you a bear instead. Why would anybody be called a survivalist without trying to be a part of the society? More suiting attribute would be a lunatic. P.S. My review contains more sentences than the entire movie. Considering there were 0 effects included (except the 2 dead rabbits and a gummy *) I find that extremely disappointing. P.S.S If that was a real *, I honestly hope those weren't real rabbits. Shame on you! P.S.S.S. Why is the lowest grade 1? What happened to the beauty of zero?

I haven't seen such a bad movie for a while! The only thing you hear are people breathing, wind in the trees (that often don't move at all) and pointless discussions. You'll see dead bodies, violence, brutality, etc., trees, earth, mud, rain. It is going nowhere, there is nothing but boredom, it is far too long and will teach you nothing. I was hoping for some surviving techniques, anything, but no chance, you have to endure two hours of void. Ordinary life in the woods with no music, no fun, no excitement, no feelings, no story, just a snapshot of emptiness. And as in all the bad movies, everything is predictable, even the happy end... Total waste of time. The worst is that the actors are good.

Since when is another end of the world film wreathed in such grand and glowing accolades? Plodding, brutal, pointless, and way too much breathing and spoon in bowl noise. Really? Interesting seedling germination process The actors did their work. This review is really against the stream, as the critics that get paid for opinion, raved. No spoiler stuff, but if the story is ridiculous, and the characters are created out of a comic book setting. A good drama would have a lot to overcome, and this work can't deal with the level of emotional intensity it wants to display in such a setting. It becomes farce, not drama. See through the morbidity, the degradation, the paranoia, the filth, and the cold, and there is simply nothing really there for the viewer to take home. Poor vehicle for the attempt to demonstrate yet another look at the downside of the human condition. Rabbit stew, anyone? Mind the mushroom sauce. As always, this review is worth exactly what it was paid. The film is so complex and difficult to create. The actors especially were subject to a rough go,surely,and curse the critic who sits in a chair comfortably granting the world august opinion on the work others do. Apologies. The need to write was fueled more by the pointlessness of putting so much energy into such as this than the finished product. This film is in a group of sad, depressing, similar works, expressing our ability to degenerate into exactly what we are now, only a lot more deprived, dirtier, and having the freedom to kill each other without the buffer of legal control. This has become a critique of subject rather than content. If an educated society desires such, perhaps this is, in itself, a critique.