Checked out the latest survival / man-vs-nature movie Adrift. This one stars Shailene Woodley and Sam (I am NOT a block of wood) Claflin as survivors of a typhoon at sea… it seems they are… ADRIFT! in the Pacific on a small yacht. This is based on a true story… the trust story would be terrifying… the movie is kind of a piece of driftwood.
The film is rigorously told out of time… it opens just after the ship is tossed by the storm and then flashes back to how the couple met, then back to them being adrift for 1 day, 5, days, 15 days, etc. Back and forth in time in an attempt to make this drag of a movie interesting. Ironically, what it does is put the exciting storm sequence within the last ten minutes of the film so even that intense scene is buried by the pace of the rest of the film.
It doesn’t help the dialog is really wooden and even great actors would struggle with it. And the romance between the two leads is not very convincing. Plus …. well, there’s a bit of a surprise ending that you may or may not buy… but it’s an ending they telegraphed in the first minute of the film. I think it was supposed to be a surprise but I don’t know how it could be.
Anyhow, the movie looks great – like it was filmed out in the ocean and the storm sequences are convincing. Shailene Woodley does an ok job but she’s saddled with some terrible dialog.
One off-putting thing was that she’s a producer on the movie but the old “male gaze” is in full effect. We get a pretty convincing demonstration of her most definitely not wearing a bra plus a lot of ass shots on a number of occasions…. hey, maybe that makes you wanna see the flick. I dunno. I found it distracting.
So… a livable, barely survivable survival movie on the high seas. Maybe you’ll find it more interesting or more convincing than I did… I couldn’t get into it.
Score: 69