Stream It Or Skip It?

Survive (now streaming on Hulu) gives us The Gift of Laughter when one of its characters exclaims, “Arthropods – from the abyss!” Whether it subsequently pays off on that goofiness is the primary question spinning out of this French horror-thriller (note for those of you who are weird about reading subtitles: it’s mostly in English) that follows a family of four as they try to a post-apocalyptic environment. Notably, the film is one of the final roles for Emilie Dequenne, the Belgian actress who broke out in the late ’90s and early ’00s with Rosetta and Brotherhood of the Wolf; she died of cancer in March, 2025. And while Survive has its issues, her work isn’t for naught – she and director Frederic Jardin’s strong visual acumen keep this sometimes silly, and maybe not silly enough, movie afloat.

SURVIVE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: TITLE CARD: “Since its formation, the Earth has experienced five mass extinctions. The sixth is just starting.” Now, in case you were wondering if your day should be ruined, this bleak statement is true for both our real-life narrative and the fictional one in this movie, but we’ll stick with the latter, because it’s relevant for this review of a movie that’s eventually more of an escapist than realist endeavor. (Besides, who wants to dwell upon the eventual eradication of humanity? Not me!) So here we are, in the Caribbean, not too far from Puerto Rico. It’s sunny and gorgeous but a few ominous shots of the ocean and the rumbly sound design tint scenes of a happy family of four on a boating vacation with grim portent. Ben (Lucas Ebel) gets a fishing lesson from his father, Tom (Andreas Pietschmann). Teenager Cassie (Lisa Delamar) lazily sunbathes. Mom Julia (Dequenne) dives off the prow for a refreshing ocean swim. Wouldn’t it be a shame if their bliss was shattered? WOULDN’T IT?

So Julia floats and – well, did anybody else notice that lone, very low piano note on the soundtrack? Not a good sign. Thankfully, Tom hears Julia’s screams and dives in and pulls her back to safety. Contrary to my original theory that the movie camera was attacking her, she got caught in a current and panicked but everything’s OK now phew that was close. And they lived happily ever after the end. No! That night, the fam hangs in the cabin and has cake for Ben’s 13th birthday, and he’s barely blown out the candles when weird shit starts to happen. A weird storm rumbles. A pod of oddly aggressive whales surfaces, bumping the boat and damaging one of its props. Flaming satellites fall out of the sky. The wifi goes out. I repeat, the wifi goes out. They’re doomed!

As the seas agitate like there’s 100 active Godzillas out there, the fam battens down the hatches as the boat rocks precariously and things fall out of the cabinets and Cassie barfs and Julia’s nose bleeds. And this being a plot that more than once KOs its characters so they may wake up to strange things that could’ve quite easily been noisy and violent enough to keep them very much not asleep, they awaken the next morning to find the boat aground on the ocean floor, because the ocean is gone. Kaput. Buh-bye. Tom grabs the compass and exclaims “North is not where it should be!,” and we believe him because he’s an oceanographer. He gets on the radio and chats with Nao (Olivier Ho Hio Hen), a submariner who says Earth’s polarities reversed, causing the oceans and land to swap places – and his instruments say the polarity will re-reverse in a matter of days. This situation is far from ideal. So what’s the plan? They’ll make the two-, maybe three-day trek to Nao’s sub and be saved. But before that happens, should they trust the man walking toward them, the man identified in the credits as “l’homme au harpon”? Before you answer that, you might want to know that “harpon” is indeed French for “harpoon.” 

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The Impossible disaster-movie moves meet The Road trek-across-the-barren-landscape survivalism, with “l’homme au harpon” being a little too Michael Myers for his own good. 

Performance Worth Watching: Dequenne, the clear standout among the small cast, helps hold the movie together by bringing the same intensity to the silly moments as she does to the more plausible ones.

Memorable Dialogue: Tom: “I can’t believe it. The conspiracy theory nuts were right!”

Sex and Skin: We don’t get to the propagation-of-the-species post-apocalypse part of the story here, so, none.

Our Take: If Survive’s screenplay was as well-considered as its visual storytelling, it might be quite the formidable film. It boasts a would-you-make-these-decisions? kind of plot, which primarily develops via contrivances, often fueled by its characters doing stupid things. The less forgiving among us would assert the movie reviews itself in its dialogue when the words “It doesn’t make any sense. It’s ridiculous!” are spewed. You’ll need to determine whether you want to pick it apart or do the proverbial brain-shutoff and simply enjoy it for its Jardin’s ability to maintain suspense and conceptualize and execute bizarre imagery. 

The movie isn’t sure if it wants to scare us with plausible peril or genre-movie thrills. Is it campy or is it terrifying? A little of both, and you’ll wish it leaned a little harder in one direction or the other instead of giving us something baseline competent. What tips the scales in its benefit, though, is its doing-a-lot-with-a-little blend of practical effects and CGI. Jardin keeps our eyeballs busy as the writing rummages uncertainly through a few half-realized themes. A humanity-vs.-itself thread emerges as the first person our protags encounter post-polarity-flip is a homicidal maniac: Remember, we are our own worst enemy! And it’s easier on the movie budget that way.

The other primary lump of fodder-for-thought is how our petty concerns are nothing in the face of all the stuff you zoned out to during freshman earth science. The film gestures in the general direction of environmentalism by littering the Desert Formerly Known As The Atlantic Ocean with scads of plastic and other trash, alongside little pools full of dying fish that sure seem edible, although that thought never seems to cross our survivors’ minds (three words: hammerhead shark steaks!). Then it has the gall to send herds of “arthropods – from the abyss!” after them, which boasts a sort-of life-finds-a-way horror that’s more than a little goofy. The movie might’ve been a touch less tonally scattered if it didn’t have a bad case of the crabs. But it also might’ve been a touch less fun.

Our Call: Pick a tone, Survive! Its push-pull between plausible terror and outright silliness is about equal, for better or worse. But I like movies that allow me to use the word “crevasse,” which is enough to tip it over to STREAM IT territory.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.