Society of the Snow (2023)

Direction: Juan Antonio Bayona
Country: Spain / USA

From the Spanish director of The Orphanage (2007) and The Impossible (2012), Juan Antonio Bayona, Society of the Snow is a moving tale of survival against all odds and a magnificent lesson in courage and hope. Adapting Pablo Vierci’s book of the same name, Bayona, along with his three co-writing associates, solidly depicts the 1972 crash in the Andes Mountains of an Uruguayan Air Force plane transporting a rugby team from Montevideo to Santiago. 16 people miraculously survive in unimaginable conditions after 72 days of being stranded, facing extreme cold, hunger, and complex moral dilemmas.

The film provides an uncomfortable viewing experience, offering an overwhelming and anguishing account of a terrible accident. The cumulative visual effects is powerful enough to get you caught in the gut, exposing horror and suffering at different levels while also enhancing the courage and the hope of these brave men with stunning precision and grueling agitation.

The movie's greatest strength lies in its visuals, supported by a nausea-inspiring sense of survivalism that shifts gears into noble acts of kindness, compassion, and collective trust. The plane crash is breathtaking in its technical magnificence, but the emotions, despite numerous close-ups and moments of high tension, ebb and flow.

Having said that, while Society of the Snow may not be a constant nail-biter, there’s enough of an emotional engine driving interest in the story. Magnified by Pedro Luque’s sharp cinematography, this stress-inducing film offers a sensory experience tcapable of accelerating your heartbeat and diverting your mind from minor troubles.

Inside (2023)

Direction: Vasilis Katsoupis
Country: USA

Slightly intriguing yet not particularly mind-blowing, Inside is a part artsy, part survival psychological thriller written by Ben Hopkins (The Nine Lives of Tomas Katz, 2000; The Market, 2008), directed by Vasilis Katsoupis (in his directorial debut), and almost exclusively starred by Willem Dafoe (The Lighthouse, 2019; Tommaso, 2019). He plays a notorious art thief whose life becomes threatened when he gets trapped in a luxurious Manhattan penthouse.

Before we see this coordinated heist getting wrong, Nemo (Dafoe), the narrator-thief tells that, above anything else, art is for keeps. He also confesses he likes a challenge, but probably not one like he was about to describe. In search of valuable works by the expressionist Egon Schiele, this art maniac will have to fight for his life when locked in a fancy apartment with barely no food, no water, no cooking gas, and no landline phone service. If this was not enough, a broken thermostat gets him freezing cold and sweltering hot by turns. The discomfort goes even further as the fridge automatically plays that annoying “Macarena” song whenever its door remains open for more than a minute.

Inside is like Cube (1997) without the inventiveness of sci-fi. It’s too ponderous and controlled to provide any thrills, and the lack of rhythm makes any possible isolation-driven tension dissipate. 

A minimalistic piano score attempts to potentiate the solitude of a man on the verge of losing his mental sanity. There’s also this surreal side - introduced via eerie dreams - that doesn’t take us anywhere tangible. I found this unfinished nightmare to be more pretentious than gripping, yet kudos to Dafoe for the dedicated performance.