Director J. A. Bayona, the man behind one of my all-time favorite horror films, The Orphanage, and the okayish Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, knows how to infuse life in old tropes and familiar paths. In The Orphanage, Bayona took the horror movie routines to emotional heights, and in Fallen Kingdom, he gave us a few terrifying sequences instead of simply going through the motions. With Society of the Snow, Bayona collects the basic ingredients of the survival thriller genre and gives them a jolt of energy to create an almost engaging drama.
The opening scenes are almost generic, containing foreshadow-y lines like, "This could be the last trip we take together." What catches your attention during these portions is the sharp-as-a-knife cuts that quickly take you from one scene to another. These transitions underline the excitement of the young characters, who smile, laugh, and eagerly look forward to boarding their aircraft. The year is 1972. The Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 has to take a rugby team and other passengers to Chile. On its way, however, the flight crashes in the Andean Mountain Range, forcing the survivors to take extreme steps for their survival.
The movie is based on Pablo Vierci's book of the same name, and in this cinematic adaptation, Bayona, with cinematographer Pedro Luque, makes the stressful experience palpable. When the characters, through a radio, learn that the rescue operation has been put on hold, their pain is shown using the frantic swirl of the camera, which looks like a man hopelessly running around in circles. We then get a cruel joke as we hear a bicycle advertisement on the radio while the camera zooms out to reveal long stretches of snow.
The movie always keeps us in the proximity of the characters. We feel cozy when everybody smiles and tells sentimental poetry to each other. Their claps are suddenly dissolved into the rhythms of an earth-shaking disaster. This scene is so shocking that it feels as if all that snow has also forcefully hit us. According to Wikipedia, most of the actors here are newcomers. These new faces make the movie appear more real. I don't think I have seen any of these actors before, which made Society of the Snow, for me, more relentless. If I had known anyone, I would have consoled myself by saying, "Hey, that person is an actor, and this is all fiction."
At first, I found Numa's (Enzo Vogrincic) voiceover unnecessary, as it merely pointed out the obvious. But he says a simple yet affecting line regarding a death later, the details of which I won't spoil here. My only gripe with Society of the Snow is that it becomes static after a while for long stretches. You can say that the film mirrors the hopelessness of its characters, but that doesn't hide the fact that the events on the screen feel lifeless. Bayona, however, eventually resuscitates the pulse of the material. Stories like these are distressing and inspiring and the director makes sure we feel the anguish, the thrill, the catharsis inherent in such survival thrillers. Society of the Snow is excellent.
Final Score- [8/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times