The Survivalist

I overall liked the movie. It didn't try to take on a large topic. It wasn't fun or nice or had a happy ending, just a well told story. Many movies are trying to be more than they are, and this wasn't one of them. It was very well acted and has great visuals. Often times, movie will go for 1-3 minutes without any dialogue, which I found to be an effective way to tell the story.

Main 3 characters didn't have any allusions of hope; they were just there trying to survive day-to-day. I am a fan of the Dystopian genre; however, often times, it ends up being unrealistic or trying to a franchise maker. This didn't try any of it, and just succeeded to be a strong movie.

Some unknown disaster has struck the planet causing a severe food shortage, it's every man for himself. The title character is held up all on his own in the woods, subsiding on the meagre scraps he can grow and repels anyone who encroaches on his land.

Then a woman and her, rather plain looking, daughter show up asking to trade. The Survivalist, devoid of all human contact apart from the marauders he kills, cannot resist the pull of some female companionship.

This film has a very small stage, concentrating entirely on the three central characters. Dialogue is minimal but effective, the Survivalist is especially grumpy and non-communicative.

There is a lot of nudity, expect dong shots and people washing their bits in the river and some very grubby sex scenes.

The scope of the story is small but the stakes for the characters are high. It has a poke around at desperation and necessity. Would you pimp your daughter out for a bowl of soup? I suppose it depends how hungry you are.

Well made, well acted, small budget but clever lighting makes it look gritty rather than cheap.

A very good, low octane watch.

Terrible starting, ended O.K.. Not my type of movie. Some scenes at the start were too gross for me to look past. Why add that? Seems to me that the writer of this movie is a little bit insecure, so he adds this crude direction so that people will say, "Look how bold this movie is!" Got to tell you, I hate it when movies do that.

This was a very good survival film, there were a dozen ways it could have gone and the story explored more scenarios then your average film without the rookie mistake of becoming chaotic.

There's empathy, rawness and a silence that makes you contemplate which way the story will flow as well as characters that you grow to really root for.

I hated the ending as I felt it was unnecessary, the ending really should have ended with the rabbit (don't worry not a spoiler at all)

Sometimes movie endings go for the shock factor and unfortunately that's exactly why the ending fell flat for me. Regardless it was a great movie all the actors were amazing and convincing.

Your heart will race and you will bite your nails because you will grow to root for atleast one of the characters and May even start to feel protective over them. Due to the silent moments, incredible cinematography and survival atmosphere you'll enjoy if you like thrillers.

However if you're interested in movies with a lot of dialogue this isn't the film for you.

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.