Frédéric Jardin’s “Survive” doesn’t necessarily break the mold. But being original isn’t totally important for this schlocky French disaster flick. See, disaster movies often follow a pretty standard formula; you only need to trade out the disaster, and the script for “Daylight” is about the same as “The Poseidon Adventure.” “Survive” simmers with the same tension as those films. It’s a sunny world that appears normal for a family of four sailing off the coast of Puerto Rico until strange signs catch their collective sight: tumultuous clouds, an abnormally rough sea, and a disrupted internet connection.
The family is sailing to celebrate Ben (Lucas Ebel) turning 13. Ben’s father Tom (Andreas Pietschmann) teaches him to fish while his mother Julia (Émilie Dequenne), a doctor, floats in the tranquil water near the boat. She is saved by Tom from nearly drowning when a sudden whirlpool pulls her down. Ben’s sister Cassie video chats with her boyfriend when his video freezes. Then satellites whose fiery form mirror comets crash into the sea. A vicious storm kicks up, and it appears all is lost. When the family awakes the next morning having survived the squall, the water is gone. Their boat is sitting on the now craggy seafloor. Tom suspects the poles flipped, causing the seas to shift to submerge the land.
The first half hour or so limps unevenly, weighed down by Alexandre Coquelle and Mathieu Oullion’s script owing too much to genre expectations. Because of course Tom finds a survivor using his VHF radio; it’s a submariner named Nao (Olivier Ho Hio Hen) who warns the poles will flip again in a week and their transition will be just as violent. He has room to save Ben and Cassie if the family can arrive at his location before the cataclysmic event reoccurs. Predictably a lone stranger with a black dog finds them before they can leave causing the family to fight for their lives before eventually fleeing across the expansive desert whose orange hues are obviously working overtime to replicate “Mad Max: Fury Road.”
The kids are predictably useless, inspiring further drama because of their incompetence. Their mother meanwhile rises to the occasion; Dequenne has a uniquely physical performance as her body becomes battered, bruised, and gashed but never broken. There are the expected nods to climate change, particularly the way we’ve poisoned our oceans. The family comes across scenes of discarded atomic barrels, plastic chairs, shipping containers, and plastic bottles (all of which are a bit too staged because you’d expect more debris organically scattered).
Between the premise and the lively score, “Survive” is decent enough B-movie background noise that closely mirrors “Dante’s Peak” until something truly remarkable occurs: a barrage of fast-moving man-eating crabs become the top of the proverbial food chain. Similar to “Tremors,” we see their constant attacks from their vantage point at ground level as they pick up dust toward their victims. You have to love an apocalyptic movie willing to be silly and adventurous. The effect is so good I didn’t care much about the family’s welfare. That may sound like a knock against the movie, but the star of a disaster movie should be the disaster—the pesky human survivors are merely there to provide easy emotion and some rooting interest.
That jolt is enough to elevate “Survive” into a sturdy, escapist thriller with a bit of snap.
